XCOM: To Boldly Go
by JohnLocke94
Summary: First attempt at XCOM: Enemy Unknown crossover fic with Star Trek... hoping to carry on for quite a while down the line. As a general guideline, I like to either write horribly dark and depressing thoughts on why humans are such awful things, or just embrace it and go, Humanity! F**k Yeah! This is the second type of story.
1. XCOM: To Boldly Go

"Open fire," ordered Commander Kinkade, and the twin Plasma Cannons at the front of the _XSS Ashes_ opened fire into the oddly shaped alien vessel. "They're returning fire!" called the XO, and a second later a smile swept over his face as he added, "No effect, Commander! They're using some kind of energy weapon, and our armor's reflecting it!"

The Commander frowned, and he patched through a call to Dr. Vahlen as he continued to watch the unfolding battle on the viewscreen. It'd only been four years since the end of the Invasion, and she was still the foremost expert in the field of astrobiology. "Yes, Commander?" Her face came up on his HUD looking slightly annoyed. "I'm a busy woman - if you remember, we've all moved on a bit. I have a company to run, thank you very much." Commander Kinkade sighed.

"I realize that, Doctor," he said patiently, "but I figured you might want to get a look at this." After working out the kinks in a couple of controls, he connected the viewscreen to her call, and watched her expression slowly change to one of delight. "A new race..." she breathed. "Fantastic! Imagine the technological wonders we'll be able to glean from them!" The Commander's expression turned to a smirk. "I'll assume that means that Vahlen Enterprises wants in on all the goodies?" Dr. Vahlen straightened, giving him a slightly flirtatious look, as she answered, "Absolutely. As I believe is one of your old expressions, they will not know what hit them." Turning his attention more towards the ongoing battle - if it could be called that, as the Ethereal alloys were easily deflecting the alien ship's weapons - Commander Kinkade noticed something odd.

"Doctor," he said, "here's something that ought to get you all pepped up - they're using some kind of shield technology."

The look in Vahlen's eyes was slightly reminiscent of a child on Christmas Day, and Kinkade wondered briefly whether that should scare him or not.

The Ethereal War had been hard on humanity, lasting years, stretching well into 2019. Finally, one of the psionics that had begun popping up so frequently on Earth - Dr. Vahlen theorized that the wartime climate combining with the constant Ethereal meddling had forced this gene to arise - managed to end the whole thing. Colonel Adrianna "Paint" Coe infiltrated their main temple ship, killed the leader with four rounds from her Plasma Rifle, and steered the entire vessel far enough away from Earth so that the subsequent explosion wouldn't rip apart our little blue marble. The only two survivors of that mission, Col. Kayla Rogers and Col. Jon Bradford, seemed rather shellshocked afterwards, and were inseparable to this day. They were still effective soldiers, just... Considered quite odd. Even by XCOM standards.

After a four year war with a casualty rate that wavered around 50% per mission, XCOM standards were in themselves rather abnormal.

By the time Col. Coe managed to blow the aliens back to whatever hell they came from, XCOM had been building for quite a while. Dr. Vahlen's constant research of the alien techniques and Dr. Shen's back-engineering of the devices they used meant that when the war was over, XCOM stood as the dominant military power in the world. The technology was the best; the soldiers were the best. When (post-victory celebrations) news came out of the heroes who had stood between humanity and uncomfortable rectal probing, the formerly black ops project began to enjoy the first positive publicity it had ever received.

The President of the United States declared May 1st "Coe Day", and the other world leaders quickly followed suit. Statues of her were built, music was composed in her honor, and every major studio had long since approached Commander Kinkade about making her life into an epic trilogy of blockbusters.

As a unanimous decision, XCOM was appointed Earth's foremost protector to the skies, and for the first time began receiving proper funds instead of the scraps the various nations thought they could spare. An orbital shipyard had been built, and Firestorm fighter craft regularly patrolled the skies of nations with unrest. After two years, even more information on the war had been released, and people began spontaneously cheering at the sight of a uniform with that signature X on it. Dr. Vahlen had started Vahlen Enterprises, making money hand over fist from the carefully controlled patents of the alien technology. Dr. Shen, the former Chief Engineer of the XCOM project, had retired to China, and had appointed his son Nathan as his replacement. The XO of XCOM, Bradford, had been more gung-ho about finally coming clean than anyone, and appeared as the public face of XCOM more than Commander Kinkade. He seemed to have a knack for getting people on his side, anyway.

By the third year, the United Nations had become the Earth Alliance, and with XCOM at its head and advanced alien tech behind, any nation that wasn't a part was rapidly falling to the dust. The EA provided plenty of funds for the construction of the first ever Battleship sized space faring vessel from Earth - named the _XSS Ashes_.

"Sir!" the XO of the _Ashes_ called out. "Their shields are down! Should we attempt to board?" The Commander smiled. "Why not?" he said heartily. "Let the boys have their fun!"

"Aye, sir, engaging the EMP cannons," the officer said, and after a few bursts, the alien vessel began to float - dead in the water, so to speak.

"Try to stun one!" Kinkade called back to the team, before shaking his head and sitting back down in the command seat. Better to let them vent their excitement on the alien ship than in a bar somewhere.

On board the survey ship the _T'Plana-Hath_, there was action, and plenty of it. Vulcans, as a rule, had become a relatively peaceful people, and to suddenly discover a new space-faring race with interstellar capabilities that could outmatch one of their own vessels was... a nasty surprise, to say the least.

The chief surveying officer, T'Janikrel, was desperately trying to draw her phaser. For whatever reason, these supposedly primitive beings had suddenly become extremely dangerous. A bright green bolt suddenly blew open the bridge door and she flinched to the side, dropping her weapon. She was forced to crawl on her hands and knees, desperately trying to pick it back up, and then changing her mind about standing back up at all when she glanced around at what was happening above waist level.

"Think logically about the situation, think logically..." she muttered to herself for a moment. Hiding behind a console, she watched the Captain fire his phaser at point-blank range into one of the heavily armored beings, who shrugged it off as though he had been tickled with a feather before swinging a mechanical arm so hard that the Captain's head, neck, and shoulders exploded in a spray of green mist.

Forcing herself not to wretch, she saw out of the corner of her eye a shimmer, and almost without thinking immediately flung aside her phaser. The last words she heard was some alien language that went roughly like, _"Smart choice, bitch," _before an electric pulse slammed through her body and she collapsed to the floor.


	2. XCOM: First Contact

T'Janikrel woke with a splitting headache. To be honest, she hadn't even been sure Vulcans _got_ those in situations that didn't involve mind-melds. Upon a brief inspection of her surroundings, she realized that she was in a glass enclosure, with many of this new primitive race standing around outside wearing white coats. On either side of her there were mechanical arms with strange pads on the end of them that seemed to be glowing with a nasty light. "Excuse me," said a female white-coat-wearer in perfect Vulcan, "Can you hear me all right?"

"You speak Vulcan!" T'Janikrel said with shock. "No," the one of the white coat said with a sigh, "we just reverse-engineered your translator and fixed up one in here." "Are you informing me," the Vulcan asked, "that you managed to use Vulcan technology? My people assumed that your race was decades, perhaps centuries away from understanding such things!"

The smile on the female was becoming distinctly toothy, and perhaps a little nerve-wracking, T'Janikrel decided. "Yes," she answered sweetly, "well, that's what happens when your planet is invaded by an alien power intent on killing every last one of you. You're forced to play a rather intense game of catch-up. Might as well begin, though - what's your name? I've got to call you something." "I am called T'Janikrel," came the answer, "and I assure you, my people mean you no harm! We are scientists and explorers!"

"That's rather a long name," said the female politely, "so I think we'll call you Jan instead, all right? Good. Now, then, what was the position you held on your starship?" Jan frowned. "I was mapping officer," she answered, "but I fail to see the relevance of this." "Mapping officer?" said the female, and by now Jan was absolutely sure that the way she was showing her teeth had nothing to do with a smile in the conventional sense. "Why, that's splendid! My name is Dr. Elizabeth Vahlen, and I'd like you to tell me the location of your homeworld, systems under your control, and your best knowledge of the whereabouts of your starships."

Jan straightened herself. "I am unable to do so," she responded coldly, "as I am increasingly confident that you would use such knowledge for nefarious purposes." Dr. Vahlen's eyes widened. "Oh, no!" she said, as if insulted. "We simply want to ensure that if your race were to attempt something... untoward... we would be prepared!" "Regardless," Jan retorted, "I will not do so."

"Are you sure?" Dr. Vahlen asked, but her hands were already creeping towards a set of controls. "Positively," said Jan, "and I feel I should inform you that any attempt at extracting the information will be useless. Torture has little to no effect on my race."

"Well!" Dr. Vahlen said brightly. "Enough is as good as a feast, I always say, and we've got all the time in the world!" With that, a pair of massive steel doors clamped down over the glass plating, and the pads began moving towards Jan, glowing ever brighter. Shrugging, she composed herself and retreated into her mind so as to avoid the physical pain she was sure would shortly arrive.

"Apologies!" she heard the doctor's voice over some kind of intercom, "But I don't think that will quite work here!" Before she had time to wonder how in the galaxy these primitives could process her thought patterns, the light reached blinding levels, the pads connected to the sides of her head, and everything was white hot pain.

Commander Kinkade sat at his desk, looking over the reports and wondering how it had come to this. Was XCOM really about to embark on a new war? Another alien empire to fight off desperately, more recruits dying to pave the way with their blood and bones? Before he could fully think himself into a depression, Dr. Vahlen came in and laid a report down in front of him. He raised his eyebrows.

"Done that quickly?" he asked in some slight astonishment. The alien interrogation unit had always had excellent results in extracting information from captives, but after so long without it he'd suspected Elizabeth might have lost a bit of her touch. "Of course, Commander!" she answered cheerfully. "That is the best part about an interrogation system which directly stimulates the brain's neural pathways! I must admit that had we gone for more... physical methods it may have proven difficult, but the shock of actually feeling what she had trained herself to never experience proved to be too much."

"What did you learn, then?" Kinkade sighed, pushing aside the report. He always preferred things spoken directly anyway. "From what we can tell," said the doctor, "they are called the Vulcan, and come from a planet of the same name. They have minor telepathic abilities - nothing approaching our own psionics department, of course - and are overall a race of explorers and scientists, although... They were not always so. Apparently they once were quite warlike and violent."

"Oh, brother," said Kinkade, putting his head in his hands. "And we just kicked them for no goddamned reason at all, didn't we..." "We do must seem like a right bunch of arschlochs!" said Vahlen. "But from what the Hyperspace Beacon has been picking up, they'll be sending ships here pretty soon anyway. I mean, we did just destroy one of their exploration vessels, and as such they're declaring a state of enmity between us." "Looks like we've started a war, then." Kinkade said, heaving another sigh. "Let's hope we can finish it."

"As to that, Commander," said Dr. Vahlen hesitantly, "I've been talking to Nathan Shen, and there have been some developments in our research that we believe you'll thoroughly enjoy..."


	3. XCOM: Live Long

"I'm not entirely sure," Commander Kinkade said icily, "how many times I have to repeat myself. XCOM is in control of the situation."

The dark-suited man enshrouded on the screen somehow managed to convey a strong sense of menace and mistrust - despite the lighting forcing him into a facial expression range equal to that of rather empathic rock.

"Commander," he began, "although you have certainly done this organization proud with your efforts in keeping Earth free of the alien invaders, the Hyperwave Beacon Satellite Network has detected a small fleet of what appear to be battleships - although these are larger than the Ethereal ones." Somehow he managed an even deeper _basso profundo_, and with it, even more menace. "Much larger."

"Yes, yes, very well!" Kinkade said quickly. "I'll take care of it!" He leaned away from the viewscreen and heaved a sigh, running one hand through his hair. After a call from the Council he always did get rather nostalgic about the good old days when they just gave him money to buy guns. And, of course, brilliant men and women to build... better... guns...

Sitting up straight, Kinkade put in a group call to Nathan Shen and Elizabeth Vahlen. "Listen up," he began seriously, "we haven't got a lot of time - at most a day or so. There's no way the new cruisers in the shipyards will be space-worthy, let alone battle-ready, by the time these Vankans get here." "Vulcans, sir," interrupted Nathan, "and if I may..."

"You may not," Kinkade growled. "What you may do is work out a way we can beat ten of those vessels the _Ashes_ engaged earlier, except better armed and better equipped, because as our lovely _Vulcan_ guest told us, that was a science starship and these will be full fledged cruisers." "It's impossible!" Shen responded. "There's no way in hell that we can put together some superweapon that can take them all out like that!" "We don't have to," Dr. Vahlen said quietly. Both Commander Kinkade and Nathan Shen gave a puzzled glance toward their viewscreens. "That's not how we fought the last war, is it, Commander?" she said. "No. We have their technology, and given time, perhaps, we could improve on it enough to face them in open combat. But time is what we have none of, so we must engage them in a... different way. Tell me, Commander, as a man who has experienced both, which is worse: to take a plasma rifle round directly to the chestplate, or to be swarmed by insects?"

Kinkade winced. He remembered all too well the time spent in South America, and no sooner had he gone through the requisite flashbacks than - his eyes widened, and an unsettling smile spread across his face.

"Nathan," he said conversationally, "how many Firestorms do we have?"

Nate Shen frowned. Unlike his father, he was not a very imaginative person, and it took him a while to pick up on subtleties. "In total?" he asked. "Around fifteen hundred active ones, five hundred of which have the final Fusion Lance upgrade. The rest just have the EMP Cannons. We've got another thousand in storage, but they're just equipped with the single Plasma Cannon."

"Nathan, son," Kinkade continued, in a gleeful manner that was entirely inappropriate for his rank, "how many pilots do we have?"

"I can answer that," said Dr. Vahlen cheerfully, "plenty and more to spare. The problem in the Ethereal War was always one of materiel, never one of manpower. Trust me, Commander..." Here she paused as Nathan finally realized what they were discussing and make an exclamation of surprise. "... You'll have all the men you need."

"But," Shen spluttered, "they're fighter craft! Not meant for combat outside the atmosphere!"

"Will it affect their engines?" Kinkade asked worriedly.

"No," Shen conceded, "but - I mean, space combat, engaging starships with fighter craft... Besides, we'd lose all opportunity to study them!"

"We still have some of the old Avenger transports from a few years back," the doctor said brightly, "and surely there's one or two XCOM squads who still have some spirit!"

"They all do," Kinkade said hurriedly, "I made sure of it." This time it was Shen and Vahlen who gave him an odd look. "What?" he said, a defensive expression on his face. "You think I'd let those loonies loose on the world after what they'd been through? Four years of war with never a day going by where you weren't being rushed from one combat to the next, and the next, and the hospital if you were an unlucky bastard who only got wounded instead of dying outright. Never a week going by where someone on your squad didn't die, someone you were friends with." He looked at Vahlen and Shen. "Shen, you know..." he said quietly. "You know. You joined up the last year of the war, didn't you?"

"I had come of age," the young man said firmly. "It was my responsibility to come to the field of combat."

"You don't know what the old guard are like," said Kinkade softly. "They're - insane. The C Squad, less so than the others, perhaps... Maybe with a little bit of time, they could have been re-integrated into society, but the B Squad were all pure sadists, and the A Squad are nothing more than dogs on a chain. It... pains me to release them."

Dr. Vahlen had bowed her head, not wanting to interrupt the Commander's reminiscing. When he had stayed silent for a few seconds she raised it again and quietly said, "I'll get to work on re-fitting the Avenger troop transports with boarding protocol. No matter how fast I work, though, I'll never have ten ready in time. Five, perhaps, if we're lucky."

Kinkade nodded his head. "I'll send the protocols to unfreeze five squads, then. Let's see how the Vulcans are at shipboard combat."

The XCOM Ant Farm had sat in an increasingly defunct state ever since the end of the war. With the Ethereal temple ship gone, there was no more need to hide underground, and the skeleton crew left behind to maintain the place had long since stolen off to some long-awaited shore leave.

Upon receiving the protocols from the XCOM Commander, the stasis chambers that had kept the XCOM squads in a state of suspended animation until they were needed again - deactivated.

It was quiet down there, barring the tap of boots on the metal floors and a soft scraping sound as gloves wiped off dust from unused weapons and armor. None of the squads spoke to each other - they didn't yet know when they had been woken, and to them it didn't much matter so long as there were more aliens to shoot at.

One commonality that all shared, even the A Squad, was a careful distance from a squad all in black. There are some monsters that even dogs stay away from.


	4. XCOM: And Prosper

Mar'Rela, captain of the Vulcan starship _T'Maire_, thought he was having a pleasant day.

He was (of course) wrong, but this can't be helped.

"Are there any enemy starships in range?" he asked his communications officer coldly.

"No, sir!" she responded, "Although we have not yet come within range of this planet's moon, and it is possible they may be hiding on the dark side!"

Mar'Rela gave her a stern look. It would have been a glare, but he was Vulcan, and it would have been a terrible breach of etiquette to show such a display of emotion on the bridge.

"Some massive army hiding on the dark side of a moon?" he asked, injecting as much sarcasm as he properly could into his voice. "And tell me, lieutenant, will they also be giant shape-shifting robots? Carry on towards the planet. We will commence orbital bombardment as soon as the fleet is in range."

"Sir," asked his lieutenant in a lowered voice, "are you entirely sure that a mere orbital bombardment will be enough to truly teach the primitives the error of their ways? This may instead merely inspire them to greater determination of destruction."

"A logical point," Mar'Rela conceded. "Gunnery, prepare the spatial torpedoes. We will aim for their major cities, of course, so as to cause maximum panic. Hopefully, a strong message that Vulcan is not to be trifled with will also present itself."

"Sir!" the communications officer interrupted, "There is a massive fleet of extremely small enemy ships coming from behind the planet's moon! They do not appear to have shields, but preliminary scans indicate they are heavily armed for their size!"

Mar'Rela stared incredulously for a moment before muttering under his breath, "Of course. It's a trap."

Corporal Leah Ellison was relatively new at all this XCOM stuff, and was mildly worried about being assigned as the sixth member of Black Squad.

What made it even odder was that it was quite evident that there were only five people in the Avenger, herself included, and none of the other squad members had said anything, so… Well, she certainly wasn't going to cause any trouble.

"Whoo!" exclaimed one of the black-armored troops, making Leah jump slightly at the first human voice she'd heard since launch. "We sure are tearing them up out there!"

Leah leaned over, ostensibly to peek out the porthole and catch a glimpse of the battle, but also to peek at the name plate of the speaker on the side. "Cowboy", it read, and she scanned through her HUD until she came to his name: Colonel Benjamin Angel, joined XCOM January 13th, 2015, et cetera, et cetera… 97 missions, 314 confirmed kills. Leah carefully swallowed and leaned back. She'd barely finished her 12th mission before the war was won and they retired everybody who wasn't in the top rankings. Besides, she didn't need to be that close to the porthole to see that the Firestorms were tearing through the alien ships – although individually the weapons would never be able to punch through the shields, they were swarming in such massive numbers that the hulls of the enemy were already beginning to glow and melt in places. Whenever a phaser beam fired, a shower of white-hot slag would spray into the blackness like a ghoulish firework, marking the passing of a pilot and his Firestorm. The sheer number of Storms in the sky, though... Leah grinned under her helmet as a chunk of Vulcan starship shattered and drifted off into space.

"You ever wonder," said the massive man carrying the heavy plasma repeater, "you ever wonder whether maybe we got a bit too stuck-up in the big war? Like, maybe the Ethereals really were prepping us for something like they said, and now that we've gotten too stuck-up, we're going to bite it against the big bad?"

"Yeah," said Leah excitedly, "I can't believe I'm not the only one who's thought about this! What I'm thinking is, humanity expanded too fast, and now that we're in the stars, the only thing keeping us together is the knowledge that there's other life out there!"

"And," said a woman cradling a plasma rifle like it was her baby, "that we're going to kick ass when we meet it." Leah frowned and peeked at her HUD. Apparently this was some XCOM psi operative named Demilira Firling.

"Paint," responded the hulking man patiently, "that's just a given. Manifest Destiny and all that."

Firling's sleek helmet twitched in a way that suggested she was laughing quietly under it. "Or," she responded, "the whole thing's just one big celestial joke from a godlike being who's messing around with us. You can't start getting into destiny and all that, Preacher, or you'll end up too weak in the head to fight off the next psychic who wants to mind rape you. Life's chaotic and weird and makes no sense." She leaned back and shrugged. "That's just the way it is."

A high, clear voice floated across the rumbling of the Avenger, singing

_The time has come (the Walrus said)  
to talk of many things.  
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,  
of cabbages and kings.  
And if the sea is boiling hot  
and whether  
pigs  
have wings._

Leah stayed very still for a moment. Turning to the man in the Archangel armor besides her, whose blue name plate seemed to shine the word "Ice" etched in silver, she asked quietly, "What was that?"

As the man turned to her, the name Colonel Adam Peters came up on her HUD, and she involuntarily took a breath at the number of kills next to that name.

"We did say," he said calmly, "that there were already five of us. You're the sixth." With that he turned back to his plasma sniper rifle and began humming "Danny Boy".

Cpl. Ellison blinked a few times at her HUD to pull up his mission history, and did a double-take at one of the medals on his record. Surely there was no way a single XCOM soldier could clear an entire downed UFO, much less one that had landed in a populated town?

Sadly, her fears about his sanity would not have been much assuaged by a view into the head of Col. Peters, as he was (at present) idly contemplating whether or not it was possible to kill God, and if so, how one would go about it.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Col. Firling cheerfully, "looks like we're heading in."

The Avengers shook heavily as it dodged some debris, and that lilting voice rang out above it again…

_I'm gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John  
he claims he has the misery but he has a lot of fun  
Ooh, baby… having me some fun tonight.  
Well, long tall Sally she's built for speed  
She got everything that Uncle John need  
Ooh, baby… having me some fun tonight._


	5. XCOM: Phasing

A shudder ran through the _T'Maire_, and Mar'Rela grimly checked his personal phaser. Sparks flew around the bridge, and he idly wondered whether the engineering staff designed the controls to shoot sparks whenever damage was done on purpose, just so that the bridge crew would know how badly the ship was damaged. Not that that was necessary – even before the _T'Maire_ had taken all the damage it did, the alien primitives technology had already proven itself by cutting through half of the Vulcan fleet like it wasn't even there. The _T'Lora_ and the _T'Mautlan_ had managed to send a final message – that they were being boarded – mere moments before screams filled the communications system, and Mar'Rela knew in his heart that he would not be able to successfully repel boarders if they were to make an attempt on his ship. Nonetheless, he would be ready.

The door to the bridge suddenly exploded in a spray of melted metal, and a few stray plasma bolts seared their way through after it. The gunnery officer was sent spinning across the deck as one slammed into his arm, his screams cut off by the crack of his body on the railing.

Phaser beams began shooting through the blown-out door, their distinctive sound filling the air as they created sheets and sheets of red-orange rain that covered the entrance so completely that not even a bird could have gotten through safely. Finally, they stopped, and the bridge crew cautiously glanced into the darkness beyond to see if there was any sign of the aliens.

Mar'Rela was keeping a level eye out when amethyst tendrils reached out and took hold of him – intangible and yet freezing him in place. In the brief seconds that followed, he could feel a mind poking and prodding at his. An alien mind, he could tell that from the little contact he had with it, and in return he pushed back psychically, trying to fit into it.

To his horror, he succeeded.

His mind's eye was filled with images of death after death – the death of close friends and loved ones. Visions of friends and family strapped to odd-looking devices and sliced apart by blades, visions of men and women he had worked with going insane and curling up into the fetal position, crying and sobbing and weeping and screaming and…

Mar'Rela noted with a sort of detachment that he didn't seem to be able to control his body anymore. It was like one of those strange waking dreams where your eyes are open, and you see terrible things, but your limbs are frozen and you can do nothing. As if he was a puppet in a children's show, his arm was jerked to the side, and his finger twitched involuntarily. He was lightning fast, and managed to hit five of his officers with his phaser before the rest noticed. His muscles were in agony from the freakishly quick movements, but he could only stare straight ahead, doing nothing but watch as his XO's turned to him, yelling something, maybe an apology?

He'd never known before what being hit with a full-strength phaser felt like. The Andorian War was being carried out on an entirely different front, and to be honest, he'd never felt like joining up anyway. It was the burning that surprised him the most. He would have thought that a phaser would cauterize the wound.

Mar'Rela couldn't even move his eyes. The bridge was silent, and so logically he must have succeeded in murdering everyone else on it. Silently he pleaded with his puppet-master to let him raise the phaser to himself, but all he could detect was a sensation of vague amusement at his pleas. He stood there, phaser by his side, the bodies of the bridge crew around him, and wondered when She would let him go.

Cpl. Leah Ellison looked in wonder at the Vulcan standing there, muscles straining against the purple tendrils that held him tight. "How long will he stay like that?" she asked.

Col. Firling took off her helmet and turned to Leah. She was thin – almost painfully so – with greasy black hair that clung to her cheekbones. Her eyes were large, and completely purple, sunken back into her face.

"He won't stay like that for too long," she said softly. "Not for very long…" She walked up to the alien, those glowing wisps moving softly between her head and his.

Leah shifted uncomfortably. "Should… should we take him back to the ship?" she asked awkwardly. "I mean, I know that Vahlen always wants more X-Rays to cut open."

Demi looked at her in surprise. "He's an alien," she said in a condescending tone. "And we already have plenty of live ones. Besides, it'd be too cruel to give him over to the doc to slice and dice until he's in wittle bits and pieces." A smile spread over her face, and the skin stretching tight across her skull made Leah shudder and not know why. Maybe it was that innate fear that we humans have of skulls, always such great representatives of death. On the inside, we fear skulls because we fear what made that head into a skull. Some people, of course, are not afraid of skulls at all – they are utterly confident that they can make other people skulls instead.

Demi Firling leaned in close to Mar'Rela's face, and whispered in his ear in a soft, throaty voice, like that of a lover.

"Do you have a wish?"

Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

"You killed all your friends, you know. Did you know – it's possible for someone to resist me, actually, if they're strong enough in the head. Mind control's a difficult technique, and one that doesn't always work. It only works if somewhere deep inside, there was the possibility of you failing anyway. So I want you to know that. I want you to know that if you'd been a little bit stronger, you wouldn't have had to kill them all. So, mister – Mar'Rela, is the name I'm getting here? Mister Mar'Rela. Do you have a wish?"

Again, there was the slightest movement from his head as he nodded.

Demi kissed him on the cheek, and said quietly, "I grant it, then."

With that, she turned away from him and walked out of the bridge. Leah quickly gathered herself to follow, but suffered a brief scare when she noticed that the purple tendrils were no longer coming from Col. Firling.

"You let him go?" she gasped.

Firling smiled – no, perhaps that isn't the right description. She moved her lips in such a way that teeth were visible. There was the sizzle of a single phaser shot from inside the bridge.

"I was feeling merciful today."

Commander Kinkade looked out the window of the newly christened starship _Alecto_, and was pleased indeed. Every single one of the teams had succeeded in taking their assigned ship, with not a single casualty. Which was, sadly, more than could be said for the Firestorms and their pilots. Services were being held in three days, and it was already being said that it would rival Coe Day in its grandeur and respect. Dr. Vahlen was practically drooling over the new technology, and was confident that they would be able to back-engineer practically everything there within a few weeks.

"Order the _Tisiphone_ and the _Megaera_ to move to flanking positions," he ordered. "Have the _Scylla_ and the _Charbydis_ take the rear. I want everyone to see the first starships of the Earth Alliance."

Down below, the people in LA looked up in wonder as the five massive vessels flew overhead, with hastily painted XCOM symbols on their sides, new names beneath them.

"Sir, if I may ask," said a crew member nervously, "how did you come up with the new ship titles?"

Commander Kinkade laughed. "Son," he said, "if these aliens have been studying us secretly for as long as it seems, they'll know a lot about our myths. I named these things after monsters and furies, and that's what we are."

"We're Furies, and we're about to kick their asses straight to Hades."


	6. XCOM: Aggressive Negotiations

Emily Erickson looked around at the room full of aliens and smiled. Really, the looks of absolute shock on their face was SO fulfilling – not as fulfilling as it was to work with the famous Dr. Elizabeth Vahlen, of course, but definitely an event for the scrapbooks.

Gareb Shran, commander of the Andorian fleet, stood up quickly as the odd-looking aliens – what were they called… "Humans?" … appeared in a shimmer of light. He was reasonably up to date on cutting-edge technology, and he knew a transporter effect when he saw one.

"Treachery!" he cried. "The Vulcans have betrayed us to these hu-mans, giving them their technology!"

At this bold statement all those around the table stood up as well, many with looks on their faces that were practically begging Gareb to make another incriminating statement like that. To his mild disappointment, the lead human walked calmly to the head of the table and pulled up an empty chair as if he owned the place!

"Let's make this clear," the human said in perfect Andorian, "if any of you twitches, you're all our bitches."

"What the esteemed Commander means to say," said the sharply dressed human female next to him (also in flawless Andorian), "is that it would be extremely unwise to perform aggressive maneuvers at this time."

"How," growled Gareb Shran, "are you speaking Andorian? When did the Vulcan scum send you data on our language and culture?"

The human male, Gareb idly thought, rather reminded him of some toothy mammal that knew it was bigger than you. Extremely discomforting, he decided, and made a note to torture this one before execution.

"My name is Commander Kinkade of the XCOM project," the human male said politely, "and I'd assume that your previous bit of idiocy there means that you haven't figured out how to reverse-engineer a universal translator from your own kit."

"A truly universal translator?" interruption a Vulcan down the table. "Such a device would be marvelous! Our devices generally require a linguist for maximum efficiency!"

The human called Kinkade laughed out loud, a long, hearty, belly laugh that stretched out both his uniform and his slightly lined face. At last he wiped his eyes, and smoothed the silvering hair back against his head. "Oh, you poor, stupid bastards," he said quietly, "you're not even half as good as they were, are you?"

The various space-faring races looked around the room in confusion, in some worry as to who or what this "Them" the humans referred to could be.

So Kinkade explained things. He explained that once humans had a hold of good technology, they'd make it even better within a very short time period, and would swiftly proceed to send the business end of said technology back towards the sender. He explained that humans had psionic powers – which, to be completely honest, not one of the representatives believed – and that they were more than willing to tear apart the minds of whatever leader dared touch Earth next. Finally, he explained that Earth was definitely willing to have peace, on certain terms and conditions.

"Which are?" asked Gareb Shran suspiciously.

"Aw, hell," complained the Commander, "no one ever reads those anyways, do I have to tell them?"

"Yes, commander!" said Emily Erickson with slightly undue delight at the situation. There was nothing that got her going quite like a good curb-stomping, unless it was particle physics. The way those molecules moved under her touch…

She shook her head and proceeded to clear her throat.

"Now, then, you alien buggers, here's how it's going to be." The Commander leaned on the table with his most pleasant expression pasted on, which regretfully did nothing whatsoever to remove his resemblance to a very cheerful wolf.

"We're keeping your starships. You're going to be bloody grateful that we're not asking for more, too – one from each of you sounds like appropriate reparations. But no, we're taking only what we have. Along with that, of course, we'd like some space to settle and grow."

"Certainly the surrounding planets would be…" began the Betazoid representative, but he was swiftly interrupted.

"We're taking an area of forty square light years around Earth," Commander Kinkade said, "and that bit is non-negotiable."

The Nausicaan and Cardassian representatives were disturbingly silent, but the Vulcan finally spoke.

"That is dangerously close to the borders of the Romulan Star Empire, our ancient enemy," he said under his breath. "I do not think it would be wise for even such… mighty warriors to provoke them. "

Kinkade shrugged. "Maybe not now," he said, "but we have a saying on my planet. It goes along the lines of, 'I may be an acorn, but I dream of forests.'"

The Ferengi representative spoke up as well. "What about trade opportunities?"

The Commander frowned.

"Trade opportunities," he said sternly, "will be discussed in five years when this contract is re-negotiated."

"Do you have any other… demands?" said Gareb Shran with an obvious tone of disgust.

"There was one final one," Emily Erickson said in a businesslike tone, "having to do with information we've gathered that says you publically advocated the violent overthrow of Earth to, and I quote, 'Teach these primitive pale-skins a lesson they'll never forget'?"

Shran snorted in disgust, his antennae quavering in outrage. "And I suppose," he sneered, "you want me to publically retract said statements?"

Emily Erickson had two perfectly formed eyebrows, and they both rose in perfectly synched surprise.

"Oh, heavens, no!" she said. "Our final demand is merely that you meet a fatal accident."

Silence fell over the room as the full implications of that settled into everybody. They didn't have very much time, of course, as Gareb Shran's head was blown open in a shower of sapphire liquid by a sniper's shot.

Adam Peters glanced down his scope, fired one more bolt into the body (first thing you learn in XCOM is the Rule of Double Tap), and went back to daydreaming about how he'd kill Santa Claus if he really needed to.

Commander Kinkade stood, and although the predatory smile on his face never budged an inch, there was an indefinable air of menace that hadn't been there before.

"Do we have a deal?"

Dr. Elizabeth Vahlen sniffed the air in disgust. She's always hated Los Angeles, and what with the new industrialization brought on by the alien technology, the smell was worse than ever. The fact that most of said smell was coming from her factories never occurred to her, and likely wouldn't have bothered her if it had.

She moved down the busy sidewalk quickly, finding the bum right where she knew he'd be. As always, he was surrounding by his little tinkering toys, those mechanical monstrosities that had sprung out of his fingers, using nothing more than Cyberdisc parts and Sectopod scraps. She brushed them aside and silently held her breath to avoid the noxious smell of old booze that always hung around him.

"Zee," she whispered to him. "Zee, wake up. We found new aliens, and I certainly cannot be expected to work on this all by myself…"

Finally the slumbering figure rolled over and groaned, already knowing that a massive hangover was heading straight for his unprotected skull.

"Goddammit, Vahlen," he grunted, "why is it that whenever you find a new piece of star stuff, the first poor bastard you think of is Zephram Cochrane?"


	7. XCOM: Thermonuclear

_When there's something strange,  
in your neighborhood…  
Who ya gonna call…?  
GHOSTBUSTERS!  
If it's something weird,  
an' it don't look good…  
Who ya gonna call…?  
GHOSTBUSTERS!_

Casper idly sang to herself as she walked down the corridor, her boots clanking against the floor. A couple of officials looked about to see where the angelic voice was coming from, but after they realized there was nothing there they went back to their duties. As is well known, people will always assume what they want to believe, and if they chose to forget that there was no radio in that room – and certainly it would not be tuned to American musical stations – that was their concern.

Finally she arrived at her destination – the Ryongsong Residence. Under her helmet, her button nose crinkled in a smile, and she began marching forward with a bit more focus and determination in her step.

It had been a full year since the Erickson Treaty, and Earth had been expanding fast into the stars. The aliens had left them alone for now, but preliminary reports indicated that every race within light years of Sol was working on doubling the size of their fleet.

Therefore, Earth had to build more. Factories had been moved off of the homeworld as quickly as possible, so that now the Moon at night was covered in long black spiderwebs that cut across the surface. She'd heard there was talk of other factories – secret factories – being constructed on Mars, but Casper had never had a head for industrial politics. All she knew was that sometimes at night you could look up and there would be the _XSS Guardian _overhead, long and proud and sleek in the dark.

Earth had its first fleet finished, but Dr. Vahlen and the new doctor, Dr. Cochrane, were working on a new class of ship that they were calling the man o' war. Dr. Shen, on the other hand, was working on providing Earth with a cruiser-class starship that would carry the Firestorm fighters to whatever engagements they might need.

Casper knew that Chris McKay used to fly those. Once he'd told her about the time that he and his buddy were trying to bring down an Ethereal scout, and it had turned out that there was another one sneaking along behind. His buddy had been blown out of the sky, but Chris had juked and dodged until he'd shot down both of the ships. By that time all his fuel was gone and he'd been forced to land.

"I remember waiting there," he said in that voice that was so quiet for such a big man, "I remember waiting and wondering if someone would come and get me. I could hear them out there – the Mutons. Ugly bastards. On the second day I thought I'd die from thirst, but a farmer came and gave me some water on the sly. Poor bugger – he was terrified of them, as anyone would be, but he saw me out there with my helmet off and he knew I was human. So he helped me out, because I was human, and that's what humans do. I didn't speak a word of Chinese, man, but that guy sure tried to teach me some."

Casper waited until a guard came through the doors before following behind him. She recalled that at this point in the story Chris would always wince a bit.

"On the fourth day he didn't come with any water. So I walked to his house and walked in the door, and there were three Mutons crushing his chairs and eating at his dinner table. Eating him, I mean. Pretty sure his family was on there, too – I saw at least one woman's body, and a couple bodies that were… they were smaller. I don't remember too many details about that. I just remember that I saw the Mutons had left their guns on the floor."

Casper idly twisted a guard's head until she heard his neck snap, then pulled him into a conveniently located closet. Why, she thought, the farmer hadn't hid some of his family in the closet she'd never know. It seemed like closets were the one place no one would ever find anything.

"So I shot the big one, and then I shot the other two, and then I shot the big one again for good measure." Chris had looked up at Ben Angel at this point and smiled. "That was when I knew what I wanted to be. I didn't want to fight these things in the sky anymore – I wanted to fight them on the ground, with the biggest damn gun I could find. So I did."

"Funny how it all turned out," said Ben with his mouth full, "I mean, with them doing that to the farmer and all."

"Yeah," agreed Chris. "Kind of seems like poetic justice, this here. I'd say it tastes like chicken, but every time you try something new it tastes like chicken. That's why I've always tried to make sure."

Now that she was in the inner residency, no one could hear Casper's boots – not on this deep-pile carpet. She could see steam coming from the next room and headed towards it.

Every mission he was on that had Mutons, Chris stuck a steak knife into his belt and brought along a miniature blowtorch.

Maybe it was weird, Casper thought, but at least he never went hungry.

She entered the steam room and found her target. "Colonel Reach," said the voice in her microphone, "you may de-ghost and proceed with your mission. Make sure to leave no witnesses."

Witnesses, Casper thought. This guy must be new on the job.

Commander Kinkade looked up from the pile of paperwork that had been forming on his desk for the past year and gave an exhausted expression to the nervous aide in front of him.

"What is it now," he asked, doing his best to show the weariness coming out of every pore.

"It's just," the aide stuttered, "you may want to turn to CNN right now, sir."

Reluctantly, Kinkade did so, and a smile grew on his face as the reporter talked excitedly about the mysterious asteroid that had struck the house of the North Korean leader. Apparently it had struck so hard that there was nothing there bigger than a baseball, which was making it rather hard to identify the bodies.

Kinkade tapped his communications pad and entered in the code that connected him to Colonel Ellen Reach, known as "Casper" to her buddies in the field.

"Congratulations, Colonel," he whispered, "but you saved some for the rest of us, right?"

Casper rolled her eyes. What, he thought she ATE him? What was she, some kind of weirdo?


	8. XCOM: Supersoldier

Col. Demi Firling sighed in exasperation as the ornately dressed Ferengi representative began speaking once again. She had found from experience that every word coming out of his mouth was guaranteed to be long-winded and practically meaningless – barely every fifth sentence had some kind of actual sense to it. She understood on a basic level that Earth needed some sort of trade agreement, but to have to put up with these… aliens. It was against nature.

She glanced to her left. At least Cochrane seemed to be as exasperated as she was. He'd done nothing but check the time through the whole meeting. For someone whose job mainly consisted of fixing little fiddly bits together until they combined into a great big starship, he definitely seemed to have a problem with details.

He leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, "How would you like to never have to sit through boring meetings again?"

At that, Firling's eyebrows actually raised a notch or two – if something like that was possible, she definitely wanted to know about it.

"How do you mean?" she whispered back. "It's not like time travel is a viable alternative just yet."

"Look," he responded, "you people are far too valuable to just sit around doing nothing while your lives go by. We're going to need you sometime in the future, and if you're eighty years old when that happens you'll be as useless as a marshmallow hammer."

"So what's your plan?" she asked.

"It's simple," he answered, "we kill the Batman."

Demi stared at him quizzically for a moment or two before straightening herself in understanding.

"This would be one of those constant references to… what is it called… 'nerd culture' that Dr. Vahlen warned me about?"

Cochrane shrugged.

"What can I say? I already have my ticket to see Avengers IV. I'm a geek at heart. Anyway, here's the plan: We're going to freeze you guys solid."

Here Cochrane coughed, mostly out of surprise at the plasma pistol that was gently resting against his stomach. "And then," he choked out, "we're going to UNFREEZE you."

Gradually, Col. Firling lowered her pistol and looked at him suspiciously while the Ferengi droned on in the background. "Explain further."

"This way," said Cochrane excitedly, "we can bring you back whenever we need to! Whenever something big is going on, we can just pop you and the team out of storage! For instance, this whole thing with these aliens, these… Ferengi. If they ever betray us, then we can just unfreeze you, and they'll be facing a death squad of the best soldiers in history!"

Demi gave him an odd look. "The Ferengi will never betray us," she said with such confidence that it made Zephram pay closer attention, "they will not dare."

"What makes you say that?" he asked carefully.

"Dr. Vahlen has cooked up something… special." She shrugged. "I did not fully understand it, but it is apparently based on the nanotechnology found in the Floaters from the Ethereal War. It is some mixture of a biological and a technological virus that will integrate itself into both the Ferengi and all of their technology. The nanomachines have a code inside them that can possibly be broken, but only one side of it. Basically, the Ferengi can save their technology, but about ninety percent of them will die off. OR, they can save themselves, and be sent back to the Stone Age."

Demi smiled.

"I think we both know which they'll choose."

"But – how did this happen?" Cochrane said in shock.

Col. Firling grinned that skeletal grin. "We're carrying it," she said as she sipped the complimentary drinks provided. "It's spreading everywhere as we speak. It'll be dormant for precisely twenty one days, during which it will spread all over every Ferengi there is…. Then a mysterious sickness will crop up, and… well… they'll have to ask their new friends for help."

She looked at the Ferengi ambassador with a contented gaze.

"They're so proud of their status as negotiators. They think they're so good at it, and no doubt they are. Probably Earth's best lawyers wouldn't stand a chance against them, to say nothing of our businessmen. But we're not lawyers or businessmen, we're just XCOM."

The grin turned slightly gleeful.

"And we are ASSHOLES."

_One week later…_

Zephram Cochrane carefully ran over the readouts on the pods that he had placed the very best XCOM operatives in. Dr. Vahlen and Commander Kinkade looked on in satisfaction as the lids closed tight over operative after operative, until finally only two had yet to be put away.

"From what our scouts report," Kinkade said gruffly, "the virus is working beautifully. The Ferengi'll be in for a nasty surprise in a couple of weeks."

Adam Peters saluted and responded, "Glad to hear it, sir. You'll also be glad to know that Colonel Reach finished assembling the requested team. Once these guys come into play, people'll think that we brought back legends from the grave."

Dr. Vahlen injected, "Be careful, Colonel. Some of them were put directly from unconsciousness into these pods, and they may take some… adjustment to their new life."

Adam saluted again, and actually smiled this time. "No worries at all, ma'am, we'll take good care of them. Isn't that right, Casper?"

The silent figure beside him nodded, and quickly scrawled something onto a datapad.

Kinkade read it with a frown, and looked up. "Colonel Reach suggests that this unit of XCOM name themselves the Kingdom Hardware Allied Nationals team?"

Casper shrugged. Sometimes names just came to her. They may not have much sense to them, but they were RIGHT. Which was probably why she'd secretly hacked into the XCOM database last night and changed the name of their cryostasis ship to something that made the voices in her head happier.

"Well," Kinkade said, "best get going then." As he and the two doctors took the transport back to mainland Mars, he glanced back up at the ship that was launching as they spoke.

"Godspeed, ladies and gentlemen," he whispered, "and…" He looked towards the manifest.

"… And may the _XSS Botany Bay_ have safe travels until she docks again."

He turned to Cochrane with an annoyed expression on his face.

"Honestly, Zee, why didn't you build us one of those?"


	9. XCOM: Alarm Clock

"Chief? Chief, wake up."

Colonel Benjamin Angel opened his eyes and looked up. Seeing as how the view above him seemed to be full of a shapely woman in uniform, he decided that it was time to get up as well.

"Who're you?" he mumbled as he reached around for his gun belt.

"My name is Lieutenant Nyota Uhura. I'll be taking care of you while you recover here." The woman stood up straight and gave him a stern look. "So recover fast. I've got more important things to do than play wet nurse to some psycho who can't handle cryosleep."

"Jeez, touchy, touchy…" Ben groaned. "Why such sharpness for such a dashing soldier?"

"Oh, you don't fool me, soldier boy," Uhura said coldly, "I know you XCOM types. You do what needs to be done, and half of you don't make it through that process with anything approaching sanity."

"Hell, girl," Ben laughed, "I've been approaching it for quite a while, but I suspect it's from the wrong direction! Now, why'd you wake me up? Is my squad up yet?"

"No the second," Uhura answered crisply, "it's a long story to the first. The short way of telling it is – Klingons."

Ben looked at her for a second, pausing from his routine armor check. He blinked. "… The hell's a Klingon?"

Uhura rolled her eyes as she moved to a nearby station. "God, I forgot how OLD you all are… We hadn't really encountered them yet. Look, long story short, everyone left Earth alone after the agreement – especially after we conquered Vulcan when they tried a second attack, and Ferenginar when they tried cheating on their deal. Everyone got the message: don't mess with Earth."

"Do they know about psionics yet?" Ben asked.

"Thank God, no," Uhura replied, "we've managed to catch all the gifted before they become too… obvious… and send them off to a section specifically tasked with training them. Which is good, because if this whole Klingon things shapes up like it's looking, we're going to need those soldiers, and soon."

"You still haven't told me what these Klingons are," Ben commented, "but since I assume you will one of these days I'll just laze around here instead."

Uhura scowled. "If your eyes go towards my tits one more time I swear I'm venting atmosphere. Now shut up and listen. Three years ago, the XCOM Fleet encountered a new, extremely hostile alien race. Their entire culture seems to be predicated on warfare. The greatest respect is always given to the warriors, yadda yadda yadda…"

Ben shrugged. "Seems all right to me."

Uhura grabbed his chin. "That's because I haven't finished yet. Two years ago, relations with the Klingons reached an all-time low, mostly because the idiot who initiated first contact with them was the epitome of a womanizing, undiplomatic, goddamn idiot of an XCOM operative."

"He couldn't have been that bad," Ben said, "after all, it's not like he just started shooting when he saw them."

There was a nasty moment of silence.

"… Oh," Ben finally said, "oh, WOW. That's … that's actually kind of spectacular. Whoever this guy was, he must've had balls of titanium."

Uhura pulled up a datapad. "On April 19th, 2151, the _XSS Kelvin_ discovered a Klingon warbird inside of Earth Alliance space. The commodore of said vessel, one James Tiberius Kirk, immediately ordered his ship to open fire, because – and I quote – 'it looked spiky.'" She lowered the datapad.

"As you can well imagine, this was a bad beginning towards human/Klingon relations. For the last year and a half, they have been constantly preparing, readying themselves for war. Three days ago, they finished preparing and made a direct assault upon Earth."

For the first time, Uhura looked genuinely uncomfortable.

"We were… not ready. The fleet was elsewhere, ensuring safety on the Neutral Zone of the Romulan Empire – don't even get me started on them – and the Klingon fleet killed over twenty thousand military personnel and sixty five thousand civilians. Among the worst of the casualties was the Vulcan/human ambassador, who had been successfully working towards a new alliance with us, where Vulcan rights would be restored in part… in exchange for ancient Vulcan psionic technology."

It was not well known, but every member of Black Squad was psionically gifted. It was just that they did not wish it to be well known. Ben Angel was not the strongest of the psi-positives on the team, but he had enough skill to tell that Lieutenant Uhura had some special connection here.

"What was his name?" he asked softly.

"Spock," she said, "his name was Spock, yes, I loved him, and yes, I'm going to kill every last Klingon I can get my hands on for this."

Ben grinned. "Killing things, ma'am, that's what I'm good at. Just point me in the right direction…" he made a little finger gun, "… and pew! Gone."

"Here's the catch," Uhura said, "officially, XCOM is pursuing a less… vigorous response to this than is actually going to happen. We can't afford to alienate our other supposed allies right now after taking a hit on Earth like that. So here's what's going to happen: We're going to hit them right back in the mouth, but it has to look like it wasn't an official operation at all."

She reached behind her body, the curves providing a brief distraction for Angel, before turning back holding a sleek black datapad.

"I represent a division of XCOM designated Section 31. We do the jobs that XCOM considers to be too dirty for public viewing."

A broad smile spread across her face.

"And you know how much XCOM cares about public relations."

Ben snorted. "So what do we do here? Just run in, drop a red matter bomb, and run off?"

Uhura shook her head. "No, no, no. You think consuming their planet with a black hole is going to intimidate these guys? They're a warrior race. We're going to beat them at their game. You and Black Squad are going to sneak aboard the Mars Shipyards, and steal the new flagship of XCOM. Piloting that ship, you're going to head off to the Klingon homeworld, and once there, you're going to kill their leader. Then blow everything up with as many traditional explosives as you can find."

She tapped out a few commands into the datapad.

"When you're done and you've had your fun, you'll find that there will be several rather… non-traditional torpedoes aboard."

Ben raised his eyebrows. "What do they contain?"

Uhura kept an absolutely straight face as she responded. "Live Chryssalid specimens. Fertile."

Although she managed to keep her expression calm, she inwardly gave a little jump at the feral smile that appeared on Angel's face. For someone who seemed so laid back – or perhaps because of it – it was terribly disconcerting to see an expression of such absolute delight at the pain and suffering of others.

"Agreed," Ben said, and took the datapad eagerly from her hands. "But I want to make one thing clear. After we're done, and after those buggery bastards are done with their work… THEN we use the red matter bombs."

Uhura frowned. "The plan does not call for the annihilation of the Klingon homeworld itself," she said slowly, "only its people. Section 31 does not require…"

She flinched as Ben grabbed her shoulder and whispered in her ear.

"You ever seen a Chryssalid, Little Miss Lieutenant? No? Then kindly keep it to yourself. One thing XCOM taught me, is that more dakka is good dakka. All we need to do is make sure that there's a diplomatic meeting going on when we carry out the attack, and that there's plenty of cams on the ground."

Finally he released her, leaning back and giving his trademark devilish grin.

"Now, then. Let's discuss the bonus situation."


	10. XCOM: Duty and Honor

"So… wait a minute. You knew Colonel Coe?"

Adam Peters sighed. It was a long trip to the MarsCorp yards, and it was just his luck to be stuck next to the newbie. He sniffed and turned his considerable bulk towards Cpl. Ellison, hoping that it would discourage her from pressing the question. Sadly, she didn't budge an inch, glaring up at him with an expression that would stop an elephant.

"Yeah," he said finally, "I knew her. All XCOM squads have six people – why did you think we needed a sixth man? She shoved us out of the temple ship and blew herself up, that's why."

"What was she like?"

Adam fiddled with his scope, fervently wishing he was somewhere else, anywhere else.

"She was cold," he answered, "cold and funny and friendly all at once. She painted a lot – that's where she got her nickname, all she'd do is draw in her spare time – and she loved nerdy stuff. But she didn't like people."

Leah frowned. "You mean, she was an introvert?"

"No!" Adam said quickly. "I mean, yes, she was, but I mean she just plain didn't like people!" He lowered his head. "I know her, and she didn't stay on that ship because she wanted to be some hero to humanity. She didn't give a damn about humanity. Anna knew that if she didn't blow it up, a black hole would eat up Earth, and all humans with it."

He smiled. "All humans. 99.99% of humans had the emotional value of shit with her. But she wanted us to live."

Adam turned back towards Leah and looked into her eyes, trying to make her understand. "She wanted us to live. Her squad. Her family. And she couldn't care less about hurting the rest of us by losing her."

He turned back to his gun and gruffly said, "I'm psi-positive too. I could have stayed. Anna is just so damn stubborn, she had to be the one to make us live. You know how weird it is to feel someone else's psi grab you and push you? She was the strongest one there ever was… Forced us all the way back to our Avenger and into the seats."

Leah looked at his eyes, and they were far away, remembering a flight in a battered Avenger, tear-blurred vision of Ellen Reach staring blankly into space before turning on her ghost armor, never again to turn it off. Wisps of psi energy still wrapped around Ben Angel, roaring as struggled to get out, his face contorted almost beyond recognition. Demi Firling twitching as purple energy raged around her head, tendrils slipping between tendrils, trying to reach back into the ship and drag out Colonel Adrianna Coe, who was standing on the bridge of the temple with a relaxed smile.

"She sounds… memorable." Leah said finally. "Maybe she was the heroic type, just not what you were expecting."

"She was a bitch," Adam said frankly, "but we loved her for it. Demi's a lot like her – she shaped her armor to look like Anna's, even took her nickname."

Leah frowned. "But she saved all of Earth – even if she did it for reasons that wouldn't be considered heroic, what she did is what mattered, not why she did it. The people of Earth are important."

Adam turned to her and gave her an extremely confused look. "Why?" he said. "They're not as fast or strong as we are. They're definitely not as smart. They're just… there. What makes them important?"

Leah stammered for a few seconds, before finally saying, "They help us! They make the tools we need to survive, they cheer us on!"

"You think we need their praise to do our jobs? But the other was a little closer. We need them for what they give us. I'll tell you a secret, Miss Ellison." Adam bent over until he was close enough to her ear to whisper.

"I don't give a damn about them, and neither do you."

Here Leah said nothing, and sat for a moment in the rattling of the Avenger. At last she raised her head and looked at him emptily. "Then why are we in XCOM? Our whole job is to save them, to protect them."

Adam laughed loud enough for the other members of Black Squad to give the two funny looks. "God, that's hilarious," he chuckled, "seriously, funniest goddamn thing I've heard all day. You want to know why we're all in XCOM?"

Almost involuntarily, Leah nodded.

"It's because it's fun. There is nothing that is better, and I mean nothing in this universe, that is better than the feeling of power you get from blowing somebody the hell up. Some people joined up because they wanted to be the saviors of humanity, yeah, but you know… We did two missions a week in the old days, two missions a week if we were lucky. With a fifty percent casualty rate, that's a pretty damn high percentage of not coming back after your first week on the job. You had to be a real asshole to keep living, because…"

Adam paused and looked out the porthole at the MarsCorp shipyards coming up.

"Because only a real asshole is going to want to keep doing this over and over. You killed those Vulcans things, but we're not going to be fighting through Vulcans here, and we can't afford to use the Arc Throwers. Aim for the head, and do your duty."

He looked down at Leah, and forced himself to smile. Morale was important to the new ones, and it'd look bad on Black Squad's profile if they lost someone to bad morale this soon.

"Don't worry too much. Section 31's sending their own squad over, too – maybe they'll have things taken care of."

Leah nodded, grabbed her Plasma Rifle, and stood as the Avenger docked with the new flagship of the XCOM fleet, the _XSS Enterprise_. It was a little bit hard at first, especially since a couple of the people on board were wearing XCOM uniforms. It got easier after she started pretending they were wearing Vulcan uniforms, though. A lot easier.

They met up with the Section 31 team in the Engineering section. The team was headed by a man wearing a black cloth uniform and helmet.

"Black Squad," he said crisply, and took off his helmet to reveal – Commander Kinkade?

"Sir?" Adam said with some confusion. "We were under the impression that there was a new commander of the XCOM project now, since you should be – well, dead by now."

"There is a new commander, some pup named Van Sickel or something like that." Kinkade looked around the room. "But I'm not heading up XCOM anymore, just Section 31. We're looking around for more agents to freeze, but for this mission we're giving you two newbies and an experienced agent. From what I've heard about you, it should be enough."

Uhura stepped forward and saluted, with two handsome men following behind her – one blonde, one dark-haired.

"Agent Uhura, Agent Kirk, Agent McCoy reporting for assignment," she said professionally. "May I say, sir, I believe we'll work well together."

Adam was an adaptable man. He nodded and gestured as he gave orders. "Agent Uhura, go with Colonel McKay and clear the lower decks. Agent Kirk, go with Corporal Ellison here and see if there's anyone on the bridge. Casper, check the bulkheads. I'll stay here with Commander Kinkade. Agent McCoy, go with Colonel Firling and Colonel Angel to clear upper decks."

Although Kirk in particular seemed less than enthused at his assignment, he obediently moved to his position, as did the rest of the squad.

As Leah moved to go, however, Commander Kinkade gestured Adam over for a quiet word.

"How did she do? I know it's always hard, especially when something we do for the greater good has such terrible consequences in the immediate future."

Adam tilted his head as he surveyed Cpl. Ellison's departing form.

"She did her duty, sir."


	11. XCOM: Best Served Hot

Kurrozh of the house Kallaor is a good Klingon. Kurrozh is a brave warrior. When the orders to attack the Earthling planet had come out, he had done his family proud, and he knew that they were already singing songs about his bravery back on Qo'noS.

In precisely forty seconds, Kurrozh is going to die.

That gleaming white ship had blasted out of warp like a bo'Degh out of Gre'thor, the white disc and two long nacelles flashing with the lights of their weaponry. When the humans had appeared in a shower of sparking light, the squad of warriors near had attempted to blast them with their phasers, but to no avail – the strange heavy armor the cowards were wearing had deflected the shots with ease.

The humans had come with great machines that sped across land and through air, and fired heavy bolts of green energy that tore through flesh and metal and walls.

The humans themselves seemed immensely powerful, and any warrior foolish enough to stand in their way without moving would soon find himself missing vital parts.

Even when warriors had tried to attack them in hand-to-hand combat with bat'leths, the humans had shrugged them off and returned blow for blow, breaking bones with the weight of their powered armor.

Despite all this, Kurrozh had not been afraid. There were very few humans, and he was confident that they could not hold out forever. Either their stamina or their ammunition would run dry, one or the other, and when it did the warriors would bring them down.

"Come on, you miserable pahtaks!" Kurrozh roared. "There's only a dozen or so! We'll tear them apart and give their bones to the women for necklaces! It'll be their blood in our bloodwine next! Soon the humans will…"

He stopped suddenly in his ranting, for he had noticed that the humans had disappeared. Kurrozh saw red, and even the seasoned officers were mildly surprised at the vehemence of the swearing that followed. They had had no idea that Kurrozh had so many intimate details of the human's families, mating lives, and ancestry, to say nothing of their personal inclinations towards potential mates.

After he had grown short of breath, Kurrozh had noticed that the human ship had launched several torpedoes in the direction of the battle-torn city of Quin Lat, and stubbornly stood there to await his fate, as no amount of running was about to save him from a torpedo. Besides, Klingons did not run from death.

When the torpedoes had landed and there was no explosion, however, he grunted at the stupidity of the humans for being unable to build competent explosives, and marched towards Quin Lat to see if he could recover any wounded warriors for later battles.

He was about halfway there when he heard the screams.

Even that was enough to bring him up short, for it was frowned upon in the extreme for a Klingon to scream even in death. Indeed, anything showing pain was not exactly something encouraged. Kurrozh climbed the next hill and gazed down into the city, frowning as he searched for the source of the screams. His eyes widened as he found them.

They were creatures, monstrous in form, about two meters high. Covered in spikes, every limb ended in a claw or a sharp edge, and the heads had two large mandibles that were covered in some kind of drool. Qo'noS was home to many weird and fearsome beasts, and these purple things would not frighten a Klingon like Kurrozh. It was just that…. They moved so fast. He could see warriors trying to fight them, and more than half the time their shots did not even connect the things were moving so swiftly. And no warrior ever got a chance at a second shot. These things were tearing into them like they were made of paper, and devouring Klingon flesh like it was fresh gagh.

Kurrozh grimly pulled out his bat'leth when he saw something else that made him freeze. Some of the fallen bodies of warriors had risen again and were lurching towards those Klingons still alive, with moans that were pitiable and terrible to hear. They were much slower and easier to target than the fast-moving creatures, but seemed to have been imparted some kind of resilience that made them ridiculously difficult to kill. Kurrozh had just taken a deep breath to prepare himself to move forward into the city, to assist with the defense, when… The bodies began exploding. The undead bodies of the warriors writhed and twisted, then blew apart in a spray of flesh to reveal a slightly smaller copy of the spiky beasts, albeit one that seemed still young and entirely pink in coloring. Although only three-fourths the size, they were just as deadly, and spread rapidly. Every Klingon that fell – only to rise again half a minute later, and explode another minute after that – only added to the severity of the odds.

Kurrozh was going to die in forty seconds.

He looked down on the carnage below, then brandished his bat'leth in the air and cried, "Heghlu'DI' mobbe'lu'chugh QaQpu' Hegh wanI'!"

…

The representative of the Romulan Star Empire who was receiving the live feed of the event smiled to himself. "Death is an experienced best shared?" he mused. "I suspect that the humans are unfamiliar with the concept."

…

Kurrozh charged down, passing by two officers running the other way. "Stand and fight!" he yelled at them, "Klingons do not run from a battle! We shall die glorious deaths and feast in Gre'thor!" Turning back around, he burst through a door to find a young warrior staring in stupid amazement at the sudden lack of an arm he had experienced. Kurrozh immediately swung his bat'leth at the undead Klingon behind him, and just barely managed to escape the thing's heavy swing in return. It was almost foolishly slow, and he danced expertly around it, cutting off bits and pieces before decapitating it in a powerful finishing blow. Smashing the blade into it several more times to ensure that it did not return as a spiny creature, he turned back, breathing a sigh of relief.

The Chryssalid standing there chittered.

Yelling, he swung his bat'leth at it, only for the creature to dodge it, impossibly fast. He took another three blows, all of them missing. Somehow this thing was so quick that even the slightest twitch of his muscles alerted it to his movements.

The Chryssalid, had it been imbued with any semblance of actual intelligence, would not doubt have taken some measure of pride in knowing that it was responsible for installing fear in a Klingon warrior of Kurrozh's status. Sadly, it was just a Chryssalid, and the Chryssalid was hungry. It needed to breed and it needed to eat, and (rather conveniently) both of these presented an easily fixable solution in the two-legged creature in front of it. Picking Kurrozh up, it devoured him, soaking the walls in Klingon.

…

Many light-years away, the Praetor of the Romulan Star Empire closed the transmission that Earth was beaming all over the galaxy and contacted the head of the Tal Shiar.

The head of the Tal Shiar was currently in bed asleep, and rather annoyed at being woken, but contented herself with the knowledge that there were at least three separate bombs in the Praetor's room that she could set off if she grew to be _too_ annoyed.

"What," said the Praetor coldly, "did I just watch?"

...

...

...

...

...

_Hello, loyal fantasticks! Thought it's been too long without some good old fashioned alien asskicking, so I decided it was high time for the mission to be successful. Also, since there'd been a few comments about Adam and his rather psychotic view of things, I wanted to remind everyone that you shouldn't trust psychos. They lie a lot, and often to themselves. Still, looking forward to putting dear Leah through every so much torture in the future, and for her to completely wipe the floor with any alien she encounters. _

_Finally, wanted to say that chapters might not be coming up quite as fast due to this being finals week, so thanks for your consideration with that. Hope you all have a great week, finals notwithstanding. _

_Sincerely yours, _

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	12. XCOM: Federal Affairs

"We have, I fear, made a terrible mistake."

T'Pau, Vulcan Minister of State, raised his eyebrows coldly.

"Oh, no," he bit off, "_whatever_ could have given you that impression?" He stood, and began walking around the assembled representatives of alien races that were gathered.

"Could it be that these people from the world they have so imaginatively named Earth seem to be leagues beyond us as regards technology and weapons?"

The Romulan Senator gave T'Pau a chilling look as he passed by his chair. It was truly doubtful that he would ever have even agreed to come to this meeting had it not been for the promise of increased territory for the Empire.

"Could it be," the Senator continued, "that it is because their territory has recently doubled since the collapse of the Klingons? Forgive me, Admiral, but you must admit that it is so."

Admiral Vr'Enn growled, but kept silent otherwise.

"Come to think of it," said the Senator as he paused behind the seat of the Cardassion representative, "could it be because of how these Earthlings have managed to completely sterilize Qo'NoS of all life using these… creatures of theirs? These biological weapons?"

Finally he stopped behind the seat of the Andorian councilor, his eyes narrowing.

"Could it be," he whispered, "that we… needed this? The one thing we all agree is that an out-and-out attack on the Earthlings is a mistake. This is agreed, yes?"

Vr'Enn stood, slapping both hands on the table.

"This is not agreed at all! Together we have more than enough starships to destroy the human outposts and rain death onto their world until the ground becomes glass!" The Admiral glanced at the Cardassian representative. "We must destroy them, not hold back from unleashing our full strength!"

Illiana of the Cardassian Union nodded, setting her long hair bobbing. "My communications experts have managed to break into the human database of knowledge, known on their world as something called the 'Internet'. They appear to use it primarily for fantastical fiction, and occasionally writing fiction about said fiction. On this 'Internet' they have a saying that I believe we should apply here – it goes something like, 'There is no kill but overkill.'"

Senator Merek stood, his Romulan uniform tightening on him.

"There is a time and place for that," he said quietly, "and I do not think it is now. When I said that we had made a terrible mistake, I mean that our mistake was in assuming the humans were weak and easily pacified. Whoever these fools were that attacked them long ago, they have permanently damaged the collective human psyche. Humans hate, and always will hate, anything that is not human. Under normal circumstances I would agree with the esteemed Admiral, but these are far from normal circumstances."

Merek turned to Illiana and smiled. "My spies, my lady," he said, "are somewhat more up-to-date than yours. The humans have a ship, their strong vessel that is determined to raid and pillage along the quadrant for five years. At the end of those five years… They wish to expand their borders. In which direction, I do not know. Representatives, I know – we all know – that during this time the humans will be expanding their fleet. I would advise that instead of launching an attack now, we wait patiently, and use said five years to let our fleets grow as well. Our manpower is greater than the technology they possess, but we need time to let our economy wholly conquer theirs."

T'Pau cocked her head to one said. "What would you suggest, then? Surely you cannot mean to advise a time of isolation from the humans, letting all knowledge of their activities escape us?"

"Of course not," Merek said briskly. "we must act and act swiftly. It is a relatively easy thing to provincially disguise a Romulan or a Vulcan as an Earthling, is it not? So long as no close medical examination is given, that is. From what I have seen of the humans, they are impressive indeed insofar as military matters go, but are no great hand at espionage. It is at espionage, then, we must hold our own. Five years it will be – five years of a silent war."

"Will this arrangement of spy versus spy be limited to Vulcans and Romulans?" queried the Andorian ambassador. "I believe it is somewhat unfair to the other representatives here who find it more difficult to blend in. Klingon, Andorian, Cardassian... Will we simply not contribute to the destruction of Earth? Unfair, I say, unfair."

"The Cardassian Union holds many worlds," Illiana spoke up, "and these worlds hold many resources. A workforce is a cheap thing when you aren't paying them – all that's left is the cost of the materials, and mining those is no great thing. Give us schematics, and we'll give you weapons – and starships to carry them in."

Admiral Vr'Enn slowly lost his angry expression (as much as it is possible for a Klingon to appear less than furious) and nodded. "Although the glory of the Klingon Empire is diminished greatly, we still have warriors." He bared his teeth. "From this day forward, I swear we will train them for one thing, and one thing only – the death of humans and their creatures."

"And what of the Andorians, I say?" their ambassador asked. "We are known for our ale and our music. Not our warriors, not our spying, not our slaves. What will we do in this great alliance, when it is formed?"

T'Pau reseated herself almost casually. "I care not one way or the other," she said, "Andor may provide drinks and entertainment to the rest of us if Andor likes."

Merek quickly cleared his throat. Relations between Vulcans and Andorians had always been somewhat… less than pleasant, and it was only the rising human threat that had kept them off of each other's throats.

"Indeed, the ale and music of Andoria is known across the quadrant!" He forced himself to put on a cheerful face. "And with that said, the economy of Andor must be quite impressive by now! After all, someone will need to fund all of these fleets and armies and weapons if we are to be a significant force in the galaxy! Who better than Andor – practically the spirit of it all! Is it not said that the soldier who fights hardest fights from his heart?"

The Andorian ambassador frowned, and Merek held his breath. Finally, though, the antennae relaxed, and a conclusive nod came soon after.

T'Pau looked around the table, taking in the Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, and Andorian faces there. It was odd indeed, she thought, that it would take a threat to all of them to bring them together. No doubt in peacetime it would have been utterly impossible to create anything like this.

"We'd best be subtle about it," she said wryly, "as I fear the humans are unlikely to let news of …. Whatever we are… Go unnoticed and unbothered with. We must be the leaders in secret, the power that influences all but remains stealthy."

Merek smiled, and it almost looked genuine for once. "We're quite excellent at that, I assure you," he said, and he could practically hear his agents reporting already.

Illiana leaned forward on the table. "Perhaps we are a… Federation, of sorts? Of United Systems?"

"The Federation of United Systems," said Vr'Enn slowly, "I believe I approve. May we meet again drinking from the skulls of Earthlings!"

T'Pau sighed. This might take a while to get used to.

…

…

…

…

…

"You're sure about this?" Kirk asked nervously, as Leah Ellison pinned the pips to the collar of his XCOM uniform. He fidgeted nervously and attempted to wipe some of the sweat off his brow.

She shrugged. "It's what the commander said before he left. He gave us our ranks and hopped off in his Firestorm, so don't ask me why, what, or how." She finished at last and drew back, licking her lips as she viewed her work.

"Congratulations, Captain Kirk. Hope you have a blast with your new command."

He leaned close and whispered in her ear, "That's all fine and dandy, but tell me how the hell I'm expected to get along with that damn Uhura as my comm officer? She was my sergeant up until six seconds ago!"

Leah shrugged again, struggling to hold back the grin that threatened to escape her.

"So she's a hot officer who's now you're subordinate. I don't see the problem here. At least Ice over there – sorry, I mean Colonel Peters – should be able to snap your mind back into action. He'll be a good XO, sir, I really believe that. With Colonel Firling steering us and Colonel McKay in Engineering…"

"And you at Gunnery," Kirk interrupted.

"… And myself at Gunnery," Leah concluded, "we should be fine. It's only a five year mission, sir, and with any luck we'll have a lot of distractions in it."

"Suppose you're right," grumbled Kirk, "but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Firling!" he called out as he sat in the captain's chair, "Take the helm!"

"Helm ready, captain!" she called back.

"Engage!"

…

…

…

"These are the voyages of the _XSS Enterprise._

Her continuing mission – to raid alien worlds.

To seek out our enemies and destroy them.

To defend the civilization of humanity with our last breath.

To boldly go where no one has gone before."

...

...

...

...

...

_Hello, loyal fantasticks! I'm back, and hopefully jobs won't be interfering too much with my writing, I do love it so. As always, leave editing suggestions (I'm terrible at editing, truly I am), thoughts on storyline, and general comments in a review if you choose to. You can no doubt tell that we've moved on from the times of Star Trek: Enterprise and are firmly going into The Original Series territory - although due to the... well... let's face it, the xenophobia (rightful though it may be) of humanity, the crew roster isn't quite what it normally is. Looking forward to seeing XCOM carry out their five year mission of intimidating alien species, lads and lasses! _

_Sincerely Yours,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	13. XCOM: Cagey

Christopher Pike opened his eyes, and almost immediately wished he hadn't. He was on some kind of strange alien vessel, floating in a containment unit of green goo.

_Damn,_ he thought, _what did I do to deserve this?_

It wasn't as if he was too heavily involved in alien affairs – he was only a minor agent of Vahlen Enterprises, meant to scout out new worlds. This was… not what he had been expecting. I mean, there were tons of worlds out there, and at least some of them had to contain some good alien races, right? With the countless numbers of star systems in the universe, the odds of hot green space babes was practically in his favor. But no, he had to come to some godforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere and get captured by… Why couldn't he remember who he'd been captured by?

Struggling as hard as he could, Pike swam to the top of the goo tank and poked his head out, ripping off the breathing apparatus and gasping as he did so. Giving his head a quick shake to get some of the slimy stuff off, he gave a quick look around.

Nothing. Just vahlenite plating and more goo tanks in the chamber he was in. Looked kind of like some of the things from the history books to be honest – boring, dry, and easily outpaced by the shining white of modern technology. Pike never could understand why all those XCOM people had to go with gunmetal grey as their color scheme. Even camouflage seemed better, to him at least.

Pike began to attempt a slow crawl out of his tank, and nearly made it. Sadly, his eyes rolled back in his head and he moved jerkily back under, slamming the breathing apparatus back down.

His watchers would have expressed pleasure if they had been more human, and one thought to the other,

_Be more careful this time, will you?_

…

…

…

…

…

"Give up, _Enterprise_!" Mudd yelled. "You're outnumbered, outgunned, and outthought!"

"Guy's kind of an asshole, you think?" Kirk commented.

"Takes one to know one, prick," Leah shot back, "you're the one who slept your way through all thirty of his women without nothing they'd had cybernetic implants replacing seventy percent of their bodies."

"It was the goddamn Venus drugs, okay?" complained Kirk. "If I'd known they looked like THAT…"

Here he gestured at the two dozen mechanically upgraded beings firing laser blasts at them from over the ridge. They were – barring one rather obese man – all women, and all extremely plain, a fact accentuated by the wires that wound in and out of their skin. Their looks were rather unimportant at the moment, however, considering how close they were to demolishing the minor cover that Kirk and Leah were hiding behind.

"Can't Firling make them panic or something?" Kirk asked. "Maybe mind control one, get it to shoot Mudd? He's got the controller for them, after all. Where'd he get that thing, anyway? Terran cybernetics isn't nearly that good, and we've been at it a hell of a lot longer than most races!"

Leah closed her eyes, taking in Demi's psychic message, then opened them and responded. "Colonel Firling says that all that cyber-crap is clogging up their minds, and if we want her to help that way we're going to have to get rid of it."

"But wouldn't that require removing, well, their minds?"

Leah frowned. "That did seem to be what she was getting at, yes. Demi's not very subtle about things like civilian casualties."

A laser blast vaporized a rock next to her, making her yelp and lean away from the red-hot remains.

"Damn," she growled, "hold on. Cowboy, you read me?"

"Loud and clear, rookie!" Ben Angel's voice came over her earpiece cheerily, making her grate her teeth. To Leah, there was a time and a place for humor, and it generally wasn't in the middle of a firefight. If Demi Firling had been there, she could have given her a psychology lesson about coping mechanisms and how they work, but she wasn't, so she didn't. Occasionally hive minds are useful things.

"If you read us so great," Leah shouted, "move your ass over here! These cyber-women are crawling all over ours!"

She popped her head out from around the corner and fired off three rounds, blowing a hole through one cyber-woman's chest and blasting off the arm of another.

"Jeez, woman," grumbled Ben, "your tits. Calm them. I've got Preacher here, we're on our way. We'll be there in two minutes."

"It's fine and dandy that McKay's coming too," ground out Leah, "heavy support covereth a multitude of sins. But two minutes is too goddamn long, we need you here now. Use your Archangel armor or something, will you?"

Ben's sigh was audible even over the consistently closer laser fire. "Look, darling," he said, "that which does not kill you has made a tactical error. You'll survive, you've got some Titan armor for God's sake! You'll be fine!"

"This wasn't the plan!" Leah practically screamed it as she tossed her last grenade towards the incoming cyber-women.

"The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster. That's a maxim I read somewhere. Pretty sure it was the internet. So, you could look at it like this: Since things went to hell almost immediately, this disaster can't be THAT big."

Leah peeked over her cover again and fired off a few more shots before stopping and staring slack-jawed at the thing that was slowly coming up behind Mudd and his contingent of women.

"What is it?" yelled Kirk.

Without responding, she ducked back down as the lasers flew by her head and screamed into her headset, "Preacher, come in! There's some humongous mecha thing heading towards us, and while I don't like to assume things, if that thing isn't heavily armed I'll eat my helmet!"

Next to her, Kirk coughed nervously. Leah looked up and sighed heavily before daintily laying her plasma rifle on the ground and holding her hands up in the air. Kirk followed her lead, sidling up next to her and murmuring, "Sorry. I didn't think I should interrupt an outgoing message."

"When we're being surrounded and flanked, that's something worth interruption," Leah angrily whispered back, "so could you remember that, pretty boy?"

The atmosphere suddenly seemed quieter, and the women stood at attention, their left hands snapping in a salute while their right hands stayed trained on Leah and Kirk. Footsteps echoed through the small canyon, and all eyes were drawn to the sight of a painfully lean man with a large mustache, tramping towards the XCOM agents. His skin seemed to hang off of him, as if he had once been a much larger man, and some drastic weight loss had turned him into this. On his head was a large Stetson hat, battered and burnt but still there.

"Hello, Harry," Leah said matter-of-factly. "Always wondered what got you rooting for the wrong team."

The worn man grinned. "What can I say, Colonel? Beautiful women, a shitload of money, and a planet all my own. Not much more a man could want. Hell, Kirk, I thought you'd be with me on this one – it's not like you were after anything else at the XCOM Academy."

Kirk glared at Mudd for a long time in silence. Finally, he opened his mouth and began to speak.

"Yeah, I'm like that. You know me and women – anything with legs, really. And it's not like I'd turn down a personal planet or the riches, either. But I'll be damned if I die with you thinking that I'm just like you. Can't you see that by your stupidity you're dooming all of humanity? For what – a few more years of debauching yourself in whatever you choose to next?"

Kirk dropped his hands in exasperation and took a step towards Mudd, ignoring the clicking sounds of the lasers locking on him.

"Screw that. If this is the part where you reveal your evil plan and tell me that together we can rule the galaxy, then screw that straight to hell. I'm with humanity on this one."

Harry Mudd gave him a sad look, and snapped his fingers. The laser that blasted through Kirk's head and out the other side was well-aimed, but even the cauterization couldn't prevent a bit of bone and blood from spattering on Leah, who was frozen in shock.

"Shut up, Kirk," said Mudd, "this isn't that part. What do you think I am?" He smiled and twirled his fingers, prompting the women to aim at Leah. "An idiot? With that engineer Korby helping me, we'll do more for humanity than you ever would have. We'll fleece those idiots from stem to stern, and we'll do it well. Goodnight, sweet Jim – I'd say I missed you." He knelt and patted Kirk's body gently. "But I'd be lying."

...

...

...

...

...

_And so James Tiberius Kirk dies, loyal fantasticks. He will be missed. _

_It's interesting (to me, at least) to think of how all the people and influences in The Original Series might have changed due to their... less than hospitable upbringing on a Cold War-style Earth that's under a non-aggression treaty. Obviously Christopher Pike is a little different, and so is "The Cage" (pilot episodes, forgive me), and since I decided to mix up Mudd's Women with Roger Korby's bio-mechanical enhancements... Well, then. See you next time, and_

_Sincerely,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	14. XCOM: Gothos

Leah was used to death. You had to be if you were going to be in XCOM, after all. A gentle personality that cringed at blood was… not encouraged. So she stood there for a moment, staring at Mudd. She wouldn't look down, not at the body. That wasn't Kirk down there, it was just a shell. You told yourself that a lot in XCOM. The Chryssalid missions in particular – it was easier to be able to kill your undead squadmates if you told yourself that they weren't in there anymore. Very carefully, she reached a hand down and wiped her face.

"Why?" she asked finally.

Mudd shrugged. "I was tired of him. He was always an arrogant ass, even back in his Academy days."

"He could've been a great man," Leah said, "he could've…" Her face crumpled. "I don't know."

Harry Mudd gave her a comforting smile. "There, there. I promise you won't have to think about it for very long, okay? Okay."

"My squad is coming." Leah looked at him with a glint in her eye. "They're coming for you, and they'll tear you apart."

Mudd raised a hand. "Ah, that would be the squad that's currently engaged in battle about half a mile away from here? I mean, really. You didn't think that ALL my women were here, did you? Well, no matter. Undoubtedly your Neanderthals will tear through my poor wives, and be here within ten minutes or so." Here he cupped Leah's face with one hand, twirling his mustache gallantly with the other. "Sadly, lovely lady, I will not be. Korby will be here any minute, and then we're off to our newest customer – and believe you me, with what we'll get from that, Harcourt Mudd will be set for life! She's a generous woman, a damn fine woman is what she is…"

Over the ridge, the sound of a shuttle was heard, and Mudd gestured for his women to form in ranks and prepare to board. The shuttle was colorful, to say the least – it appeared as if Mudd had painted it himself, and… how to describe it… Well. Harry Mudd was to art what the color orange is to subtlety and stealth.

"Regretfully," Mudd said to the still empty-eyed Leah, "that's my ride. Sorry to make our parting so brief, sweet lady, but business calls, you know how it is, and so…." He tipped his hat to her as his ladies made their way aboard the shuttle. Drawing from a side holster a large, alien-looking weapon, he aimed it at Leah's head and smiled sheepishly. "They do say you never feel the one that gets you," he commented, and pulled the trigger.

…

Leah stood for a moment, looking around. There was Mudd, there was the shuttle, there were his women boarding it, there was the weapon's beam three inches away from her nose… Nervously, slowly, she stepped back. Nothing happened (an encouraging development) so she took another step, and then another. Still nothing. "Hello?" she called out. "Is there anyone there?"

"**It's me,**" said a voice that seemed to reverberate from all around her. "**I'm Trelane.**"

…

…

…

…

…

"Damn," growled McKay as he swapped out his plasma repeater's ammo pack for a new one, "these things just keep coming, don't they?"

"It's your irresistible personality," said Demi dryly, "they just can't get enough of it."

Ben Angel paused briefly his wholesale barrage of plasma pistol fire long enough to say sarcastically, "Good God, Paint made a joke. Suppose this means the world's ending soon, eh? Of course, you have to admit she's right, Preacher. You know what they say about men with big guns."

McKay glared at him as he mowed down a few more of the cyber-women, and gritted his teeth as he said, "Matter of fact, I do. It's just horrifically untrue."

Colonel Ellen Reach said nothing, as she was currently occupied with walking up behind cyber-women and removing most of their torso with a well-placed Alloy Cannon blast. Really, thought this woman in an invisibility suit that's permanently on, some of these people were just plain odd.

"Double-time, people," called out Colonel Peters, "Kirk just flatlined, Sergeant Ellison's life readings look like they're an earthquake detector in 1902, and I'm getting hungry. Heard there was going to be Mexican food back at the _Enterprise_ today."

Ben casually turned and fired one pistol into the mouth of a screaming cyber-woman before turning back to the main front and adding to the streams of green that were pouring into Mudd's front lines. "You should know better by now," he said, "the mess hall always lies. When they say it's Mexican, it's going to be Chinese. When they say it's going to be Chinese, it's going to be rations. And when they say it's going to be rations, you'd be better off staying out of the mess hall for the day."

"Wait, Kirk flatlined?" yelled McKay. "When the hell did that happen?"

Peters shrugged. "Who cares? He wasn't in the squad. We'll be better off with whatever new captain they give us."

At that, Colonel McKay gave Colonel Angel an awkward look, Colonel Angel gave Colonel Firling an awkward look, and Colonel Firling looked awkwardly in the last place she'd seen Colonel Reach's Alloy Cannon fire.

"Colonel," said Firling finally, "you're XO. For the remainder of this mission, that means YOU'RE Captain."

Adam (or at least, his helmet) gave her a blank look for a moment. Really, it was almost impossible to convey facial expressions in those things, but it was far better than just going around without helmets. Granted, regulations permitted a trooper to forgo the helmet if they wished to, but as any trooper who did so ceased to be a trooper soon after that… Most people just wore the damn helmet. Eventually you got used to exaggerated head movements for saying subtle things like, "Oh, really", "I wish to bone you vigorously", and "I guess I'm the captain of the ship now".

"I guess I'm the captain of the ship now," Adam finally said, and picked off a straggling cyber-woman. "I've always thought I'd be good at leadership."

"You've led our squad for the past – hell, I don't even know how many years now. Timeline's got all screwy," complained McKay. "I can't keep track anymore."

"Don't confuse the issues with facts, man!" Ben said cheerfully, and tossed in the addendum of, "Yeesh. Look at those things go. Why're they all running?"

"Probably," said Firling in a forced-calm voice, "due to the massive portal opening up behind us."

Colonel Ellen Reach had noticed this a few seconds ago, but didn't think she should say anything. After all, it was extremely rude to interrupt.

"Oh, hell," sighed Adam, "I suppose this means we have to run towards the cyber-women now."

"**Not really.**"

It was, they all later agreed, the closest thing to being swatted into a basketball hoop that human life could safely approximate. What with the ridiculous amounts of quantum interference going on, it was really a wonder that any of their equipment worked at all, much less them.

Ellen was, of course, the first to open her eyes. She checked first to make sure that her ghost armor was still on. It was.

Right, then.

Second thing was to check for a possible means of escape. She turned around and examined the portal carefully. It was very definitely closed.

Third item – ensure the safety of one's comrades. Ellen moved up behind them and began singing softly. She'd gotten about halfway through the first chorus when she realized that a lullaby was probably not the best way to get someone to move. This stumped her for some time – a problem soon solved when she began moving around kicking people until they got up. To her satisfaction, everyone got up, and as they all thought it was one of the others kicking them, she was pretty sure that today counted as one of the Good Days.

"Does anyone know where we are?" complained Demi. "The atmosphere here is awful. Reminds me of New Angeles on a bad day."

"**That's probably because you're in Los Angeles. Granted, it's a different year than what you're used to, but… still.**"

"Okay, that's it," complained Ben, "who are you, and why do you think you have the right to jerk us around by the balls – pardon me, ladies – and do whatever you want with us?"

"A better question," added Demi, "might be what are you."

"**Very good! I always approve when people ask the right questions.**"

"So answer them, then!" yelled McKay.

"**Oh, all right. You people are boring, to be sure… In any event, I am Trelane. As to what I am – I am a Q.**"

...

...

...

...

...

_Hello, loyal fantasticks! _

_I'm going to start off by gushing about how much I love time travel. So, take my word for it on this one - I just really, really love time travel. With that in mind, I hope you'll forgive me by throwing in a time travel story, mostly because if you're reading a Star Trek crossover fic and you don't want to run into a time travel story, I feel so sorry for you that I can't help but hope that you have projections of forgiveness on somebody. Because if not, then wow, are you ever screwed up._

_Also, there's Q. Obviously. Pretty sure it's canon that Trelane was a Q, but if he wasn't, ah well. He is now._

_Sincerely,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	15. XCOM: Flowers in Bloom

There was once a room outside the universe.

This is really a terrible sort of description, but human language fails at certain things, particularly those things involving complicated bits of time and space. "Once" was definitely incorrect, "outside" nearly as bad, and "universe" implied that there was only one.

Suffice it to say, there were Q in the room, and they were confused.

"**These humans,**" said the one who called himself Trelane, "**are endlessly amusing. I for one could play with them for another few thousand years before I begin to bore.**"

A ripple moved around the eleven dimensions in the room, emanating from a certain Q there. It seemed to be the sort of ripple that expressed displeasure.

"**I do not agree at all!**" This Q had always been rather more interested in humans than the others had. The main difference is that he believed that it was more interesting to watch than to play. A belief, sadly, that was unshared by every other Q there.

"**You are outvoted.**"

"**Young.**"

"**Aggressive.**"

"**And highly unstable.**"

The Q frowned.

"**And yet,**" he said, "**I have learned from the humans, learned something you appear to have ignored.**"

There was a moment of audible and psychic silence from all the Q present. Suddenly, there was one less presence in the white room.

"**I have learned,**" came the voice of the Q from somewhere that was, to the worry of the other Q, not in the room, "**how to cheat.**"

In eleven dimensions at once, the room began to twist and lock in on itself. Several of the Q attempted to teleport out, but found that the dimensional twisting was somehow preventing it. Those who tried escaping via more conventional means found themselves running into their own backs, due to the eleventh dimension being a right bastard.

In eleven dimensions at once, the room began to shrink.

The Q reflected on the societal implications of being the last of a race, and decided that there was a reasonably good excuse now for simplifying things a bit. A flash of light echoed through an empty corridor on Earth, and he said his name with delight.

"**I am… Q!**"

There's been about enough of this interfering business, he decided. From now on, it was time to sit back and watch the fireworks go bang.

…

…

…

…

…

The Commander of Section 31 paced back and forth. Then, to be original, he paced forth and back.

"When is it going to be ready?" he growled in Dr. Vahlen's direction. "We don't have all the time in the world, you know."

She rolled her eyes and brushed a hand through her hair before biting back, "Your ignorance of basic temporal mechanics is astounding, Commander. Although I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised – most of your job description includes telling men with guns to go here or there, and shoot at the bad people until they explode into little chunky bits. Then I must go through little chunky bits until I find something useful for you to make more chunky bits out of. It is tiresome at best." Somehow, her slight Russian accent only made her sound more exasperated. Of course, foreign accents often do this – it's just that Russian, particularly so.

Commander Kinkade slammed his palms onto her desk, causing tremors which knocked over a small bobblehead figurine of Sheldon Cooper.

"I understand," he gritted out, "that you probably think of me as nothing more than a star-spangled idiot whose entire net worth consists of growling at people until they blow up. But I need you to understand that the Federation has finally made a move, and neither the _XSS Enterprise_ nor Black Squad is here to fight them off.

Dr. Vahlen shrugged. "It is comforting," she noted, "to know that you have a knowledge of recent events. I would not worry too much, however. In the event of something truly pressing, the satellite defense grid has been reconfigured to emit a frequency designed to disrupt the dilithium extractors on enemy ships, rendering their warp cores unstable."

She stood and walked over to the chrono-particle sensor. "Extremely unstable."

Commander Kinkade gave her a look which could be favorably interpreted as furious. "Are you telling me that you have a way to blow up every ship in their goddamn fleet and you're not using it? Are you insane?"

"The more accepted term is 'mad' scientist, Commander," she noted drily, "but I will forgive any brief loss of verbal coherence with the understanding that you are under a great deal of stress."

Kinkade was astonished to find that she'd actually taken his hand in hers and was giving him a motherly look, which was a bit odd coming from a leggy Russian scientist. He wasn't about to stop her, though, so he did his best to think motherish thoughts.

"Commander," she said gently, "trust me. If worst comes to worst, then I will use the satellite system. I do not think it will, though."

"And just why the hell is that?" he said wearily.

"There is a time," said Dr. Vahlen, "for being clever with small pieces of machinery and computers. I am very good at this. There is, however, also a time for filling the sky with as much moving death as possible. This is what you are good at, and you have not done it for some time." She gave him a stern look and smacked his shoulders. "So go do it! Command your fleet, order your ships to orange alert or whatever it is you do with gunboots and jackships!"

"Does humanity even deserve it?" he asked finally. "All we've known is war, endless war and preparation for war, decade after decade. It's shaping up to be century after century."

Vahlen raised an eyebrow. "I tell you what," she said decidedly, "you come back safe after blowing aliens out of the sky and bringing me the pieces to play with, and you go out and take a walk in Central Park. It is a good area, filled with flowers and grass and puppies and whatever else your American brain is needing. Me, I cannot understand this too well – tastes like diabetes to me – but I know you need it."

She opened the door and patted him on the back.

"Also if you come back alive I'll give you a kiss. Now go, blow things up. And remember – it is for Earth."

Commander Kinkade began giving orders left and right, preparing to launch what there was of an XCOM starship fleet, and made a mental note to come back alive.

…

…

…

…

…

"_XSS Excalibur _reporting in."

"_XSS Crious _reporting in."

"_XSS Washington_ reporting in."

"_XSS Hallows _reporting in."

Commander Kinkade keyed the remote controlling fleet-wide communications and said as clearly as he could with a four-alarm hangover, "Flagship _XSS New York _reporting. All ships, take formation." An arrow formation was shaped on the ship's tracking screen, and Kinkade sighed. It was no good. There was sure to be an enemy fleet of at least fifty ships, and no matter how good the Earth ships were, they couldn't beat ten to one odds playing fair. Sitting back in the Captain's chair, he began to think of redoing his strategy. The original strategy had involved the ships peeling off two by two until he could flank the enemy fleet, but he quickly realized that this was not going to work if the enemy commander was intelligent enough to focus on one ship at a time. Besides, everybody does the pincher movement.

"Sir?" called the communications officer – a young man from Europe, if Kinkade remembered properly, who went by the odd nickname "Banana" among the crew. He'd never found out why, thought Kinkade absentmindedly, and now he never would…

"Sir, do we have an estimate of enemy ships incoming? I need to set up the sensors."

Kinkade gazed at the field of stars. They seemed oddly empty. He shouldn't have to do this kind of thing, he was born in the 80's, for God's sake._ Stuck in charge of a defunct anti-alien task force that was constantly given no budget, no good guns, and soldiers with accuracy like they'd graduated from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship school. So we win, we beat the aliens, we drive the bastards off Earth, and now there's more. They put us in charge because we can't afford countries fighting at a time like this, and it's inconvenient as hell. I'm tired of thinking up new ways to beat them, because it always only works once and then they tear you a new one and shove their shiny alien weapons up it._

"Estimated fifty enemy starships, lieutenant," he said quietly, "hope that answers your question."

The bridge of the _New York_ was utterly silent as the crew absorbed this. Kinkade looked at their faces – a couple of them had that look that young men and women have when they think they're about to go be heroes. Some of them looked frightened, probably wondering whether they could slip away and steal one of the shuttles without being noticed, or fired upon. But one or two of them, he noticed with pride, had the look on their face that men get when they know they are about to die, and are ready to give it their best anyway. The communications officer was one of them, along with the first officer. What was her name again… Lieutenant Commander Church? Sanctuary? Something like that. Kinkade gave a short nod. They would do. A few good men on a bridge would hold the rest together.

"Sir?" said the lieutenant commander. "Remember, sir. The enemy's gate is down." The Commander gave a laugh at that one – he hadn't read that book in years, and was frankly surprised people still read it when there was a real space war going on. Still, it brought back good memories of –

Down.

Up and down.

The enemy's gate is down.

Commander Kinkade keyed the fleet-wide communication pad again. "To the fleet, this is your Commander," he said quickly, "move all auxiliary power to the engines and prepare for some complex maneuvers." He turned to the bridge to face his crew and said firmly, "We're going to win."

…

…

…

…

…

James Rivers was the captain of the _XSS Hallows_, and he'd never done anything like this before in his life. When he'd first heard the legendary Commander Kinkade's voice come through the ship-wide comms, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven. Or possibly hell. Considering the fabled exploits of the XCOM Commander, either was likely. Everyone had seen the war pictures of the old man – although come to think of it he didn't look all that old, maybe mid-forties at the most – and to know that this man was in charge was a wonder he wouldn't soon forget.

"Prepare plasma cannons and fusion lances!" he ordered nervously. "And ready engines for maximum sublight velocity! We're going to be pulling some tricky stuff here!"

Captain Rivers turned to the front, readying himself for the final orders, and was interrupted by around fifty flashes of light appearing in the sky.

"Damn," he mumbled, "Lieutenant Clarke! Bring us to the assigned coordinates!" The stars in the sky wheeled about as the _Hallows_ changed direction, suddenly zooming downwards. A silly convention, as there was technically no "downwards" in zero-gee, but since the enemy fleet had been so kind as to arrange their ships all on the same plane…

In the sensors, Captain Rivers could see the _Crious_ wheeling down under the enemy fleet, and the _Washington_ and _Excalibur_ sliding planes until they were far above the angle of enemy fire. The _New York_ seemed to be charging the enemy ships head on, relying on a quick series of evasive maneuvers to dodge incoming phasers and torpedoes.

When the _Hallows_ was properly positioned, Rivers took a deep breath and gave the order. "Ahead full, all guns open fire!'

Captain Rivers briefly wondered why no one else had ever thought of doing this. Apparently the enemy ships had done the "sensible" thing and focused all spare power on the forward shields. This would indeed have been sensible in the kind of starship battle that regularly went on, but it was totally unacceptable when carrying on combat in a three-dimensional playing field.

"Remember the Commander's orders," he barked, "target the guns and shield generators!"

Green plasma bolts seared through the vastness of space, looking like they should be making some sort of noise despite the vacuum. Before the enemy fleet had a chance to reposition, the fusion lances had fired as well, tearing through the hulls and sending little specks out into the void. If you looked closely, you could almost see their arms flail…

The _Hallows_ and the _Crious_ shot upwards, leaving disabled ships in their wake as the _Washington_ and the _Excalibur_ passed in the other direction. A few scattered phaser shots attempted to make contact, but the sheer speed of the assault had managed to successfully disable around twenty ships, with the _New York_'s frontal attack disabling another two.

"Bring us about!" Rivers screamed, "Bring us the hell about! Target undamaged ships, get their weapons and their shields, do it now, now, now!" He shouldn't have to do this. He'd been promoted to captain during the peace treaty, he shouldn't be doing this. He wasn't ready for combat, the _Hallows_ had just left dock last month, this wasn't FAIR -

Another ten ships down. They'd started re-aligning their shields. The same attack wouldn't work again, and the _Washington_ had taken heavy fire that last pass. From her hull, sparks leaped and glowing hot metal warped and twisted. Rivers watched in shock as she attempted another pass, and a massive Romulan bird-of-prey fired a pair of torpedoes into her stern. With that, the ship was doomed, and with an explosion in the engines that sent shards of the ship flying through the battlefield, the _Washington_ lost control and veered into a Vulcan scout. Both ships crumbled like dry bread, and a part of Rivers' brain that still had the capacity for rational thought wondered how long it had taken them to die. That same section then noticed that the gigantic bird-of-prey had been hanging back for the entire battle. To the discerning eye, it certainly LOOKED like the kind of ship that would be the flagship cruiser. Perhaps if it was destroyed, the enemy fleet wouldn't have the kind of precise, tight movement that was giving the Earth fleet so much trouble…

"Commander Kinkade!" he yelled over the comms system. "Sir, you have to listen to me! I think I've found the flagship!"

"We know," came the response, "it's that big Romulan son of a bitch. Doesn't do us any good, though – any ship trying to get close enough to shoot it down would be torn to shreds before it could get a shot off."

"Yes sir, Commander," said Rivers abashedly, and leaned back in the Captain's chair. Straightening up, he turned to his XO. "Savage," he said quietly, "how fast would a ship propelled by a warp core explosion go?"

Lieutenant Savage saluted before responding, "Roughly twice our maximum sublight speed, Captain."

"Corporal," Rivers said to the communications officer. "Do we have any auxiliary left?"

"A bit, Captain," she responded, "not a lot, but we have some."

"Then prepare to launch warp core and transfer every bit of auxiliary power we have to the shields," Rivers said firmly, "and prepare to abandon ship."

"We don't have any time, sir," said Savage, "the enemy fleet is already drawing itself tighter. If you're planning what I think you're planning, it's now or never."

Captain Rivers looked at her with a shocked expression. "I'm not going to just kill everyone on this ship without giving them a choice in the matter!"

"Sir," said the officer at Tactical, "we had a choice, and we chose it. We're XCOM."

…

…

…

…

…

Kinkade stroked his chin, feeling the stubble he'd let grow over the past few days. He watched the viewscreen with a sense of dread as the _Crious_ took a heavy pattern of phaser fire to the port side, sending metal slag spraying across space. She returned fire, taking out a light cruiser, but the enemy was packed too closely for any amount of return fire to be safe, and he knew in his heart that the _Crious_ was as good as lost already, along with all the men and women on board.

"Greater love," came a voice from the ship-to-ship communications, "hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Captain James Rivers, signing off."

Kinkade looked again at the viewscreen, and saw that the _Hallows_ had ejected its warp core behind it.

"Greater love," came a woman's voice, "hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ship Commander Claire Savage, signing off."

The warp core exploded with an eye-searing burst of light, destroying a Cardassian boarding transport and launching the _Hallows_ forward at a rapid pace.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Lieutenant Commander Karl Reimer, signing off."

The enemy fleet had seen the new incoming ship closing on their position, and were firing on it, but the _Hallows_ shields were still at orange, not yet dipping into the dangerous red.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Lieutenant Comm Officer Alyssa Wienecke signing off."

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Lieutenant Tactical Officer Robert Fogerty signing off."

Now the enemy fleet had noticed their danger, noticed that this ship wasn't firing any weapons. They poured on the phaser fire, and launched every torpedo they could get into the loading bays, but the shields were holding at red.

That's the thing, Kinkade thought, about humanity. That's why we won the Ethereal War. It's the same reason that an XCOM squad member would fire a rocket into a room he knew contained his buddies, if he also knew that it had a squad of aliens in it. Why some soldiers threw grenades at their feet when they saw Chryssalids coming, so their squadmates wouldn't have to shoot their reanimated corpses. We will fight you and fight you and fight you, and then when you think you've beaten us we'll come back and we'll run ourselves onto pointy stakes for a chance to spit in your face one last time.

"Pay our respects to the brass," came the increasingly strained voice over the comm, "and will you tell my sister that…"

Other voices quickly chimed in, coming from all sides, sounding desperate for a chance to say one last thing. Not afraid – just impatient, sounding as if their money was about to run out on a pay phone.

"Tell my mother…"

"Tell my father…"

"Tell Cynthia that I…"

"… tell her I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I know I…"

"Somebody make sure that my cat…"

"Father, into your hands I commit my…"

There was a burst of light in space. It looked a bit like a flower from a certain angle.

Greater love hath no man than this. That he lays down his life for his friends.

…

…

…

…

…

_Loyal fantasticks._

_It's a pleasure to be back. I'd tried to put a lot of thought into this chapter, and upon careful consideration that despite some rather rude reviews there was one thing that they had right – editing is extremely important, and I don't do it. I write, and then I immediately put it here. I'm going to try something different for the next chapter – I'm going to try an editor. If there is anybody who would like to edit my work (for free, obviously, since it's not like I have any money or anything) than please message me or post a review stating so. Please note, I'll probably want to read some of your work before immediately hiring you, and (if there are more than a couple people who say, "sure, why not") I won't be able to say "yes" to everybody._

_Thank you for sticking with the story thus far. I realized that I'd gotten a bit off track, and that while I want to show that humans can be terrible creatures (ex: Adam), horribly broken things (ex: Ellen Reach), and things that just follow the crowd (ex: poor Leah), they can also be wonderful. I'd read a story about a Holocaust survivor the other day during the Virginia Tech massacre who'd saved students. I'm not sure why, but I cried when I read that. I found that a wonderful thing, that someone who had seen such awful tragedy was brave enough to hold the door against an armed gunman, barricading it with his body before being shot down._

_I write stories about how awesome humanity is in battles and things, but a key part of every battle is the determination in a soldier to die for their comrades. This is part of what makes humanity great, and it is something I will try to not forget in my writing again._

_Sincerely,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	16. XCOM: Ash Flowers

Ashes fell over the city of angels.

A woman in a pure white pantsuit walked down the streets, her clothes and face smudged with dirt and black ash. Her light brown hair, normally pulled back in a tight bun – it had been so for years – was loose, and she constantly was brushing strands away from her blue eyes.

She stopped next to a man lying on the ground, a large chunk of his side torn, likely shrapnel from crashed ships or ruined buildings. Although the XCOM starships had won the day, the wreckage had fallen from the skies and damaged several cities on the North American west coast – Los Angeles had taken some of the heaviest casualties. "Please," choked out the man, "help me."

His face was covered in shadows, his dark skin cut in places. The ash made the red so dark it was almost maroon. As the woman knelt beside him, he gasped, "We should surrender… It's no use anymore."

"We will never surrender," she said softly, "you know that. We cannot become slaves to these others who seek to destroy us. They have crossed the line too many times. As life is now, it must be us or them."

"Surely," the man said weakly, "even a life of slavery would be better than this horror that has fallen on us. Our warriors slain in battle by the hundreds, our cities covered in ash and ruin…"

The woman stood up, stepping back from him with a smile. She drew a small plasma pistol from behind her and held it with a steady hand. "No," she said. "No, it would not be better. So long as even one human survives, holding our principles alive, then we are not defeated. If we accept slavery, then we will be doomed as a species. The difference between us, sir, is that humanity has a gentle side as well as a side of total war. Is – an oddity of ours. Bloodlust may strike, certainly, and some fall to it. But we fight so that we may have peace."

With effort, the wounded one dragged himself forward into the light, revealing his head ridges and the small controller he grasped in his right hand. Upon seeing it, the woman immediately turned and ran, screaming at the others nearby to get away as quickly as they could.

"Your kind knows nothing of true war," growled the Klingon. "I die for my people. You run for yours." With that, he released the button he had been compressing on the controller, and everything in the area was filled with fire and noise and shrapnel.

Dr. Vahlen stood around a nearby alleyway corner, nervously trying to shush a crying girl she had pulled in before the blast. Reports had been coming to her comm padd for the last twelve hours or so of these Klingon survivors, who had launched their escape pods to Earth instead of attempting to flee. Although most of the Federation fleet had blasted away at warp speed as soon as the flagship fell, the Klingons kept popping up around the city, always shouting a violent war cry before exploding in a bloom of death. Often, they targeted the shelters for the wounded first of all, using the injuries they received in their crash as an excuse for a covered head and body.

"Everything will be all right," she whispered to the girl, who had her head pressed tightly against her chest as she sobbed messily. "Everything will be just fine. We just need to get to a safe place. I am a doctor, I have very high level clearance. I'll make sure you are, how it is, O.K. as much as I can."

"Please," cried the girl, "please, you've got to help me find my dad. He was the in the New Angeles Forestry building, do you know where that is?"

Vahlen closed her eyes and nodded. She knew very well where it was. She had been walking around the city for the last twelve hours trying to find survivors, she knew Los Angeles better than she had ever before. Anyone who had passed through the upper west side knew to stay well away from the pillar of fire that the Forestry building had turned into.

"I am sorry," she said with a slight scratch in her throat that she blamed on the ash, "I believe he is gone. There is nothing I can do." The girl stared at her with a blank look for several seconds, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing, before burying her head in Vahlen's chest again. Awkwardly, the doctor disengaged one arm so she could tap at her ear comm to answer the call she was receiving, giving the girl a pat or two in the meantime.

""_Vahlen_," came the Commander's harsh voice, "_get down to the labs, now. I need to get in touch with Black Squad, anyway I can. As soon as I can._"

Vahlen gave an absent-minded answer in the affirmative, and looked around her city of angels.

…

…

…

…

…

Commander Kinkade looked at the map of the world, and wondered how on Earth humanity had fought off aliens the first time. Must've been some feat of close to magic, some massive MacGuffin that turned it all around at the last minute and turned us into superhumans so we could fight off the menace.

_No, wait,_ he remembered, _it was me._

_Me and the brave (not to mention quite possibly psychotic) poor sods who threw themselves into hell every day so that the rest of humanity could make it through relatively unscathed._

The titanium door opened, locks sliding, and Vahlen walked through. She was covered in ash and dirty, and there was a small and extremely grubby girl walking behind her, with little streaks under her eyes that showed she'd been crying.

"Who's that?" Kinkade said briskly. It wasn't standard procedure to bring random people into the base with no reason at all, but Vahlen had been sounding rather distracted ever since the battle, so there was no knowing.

"Her name is Caroline," Vahlen said with a sigh, "her family is dead, she has nowhere to go, and I just thought that…"

"That you could bring a civilian into the most top-secret institution in the planet – no, strike that, in the solar system – and she could be the straight man who goes Ooh and Ahh at everything we do and wonders at our superior technology and military prowess, slowly becoming a mediating factor on our entire way of life?"

Vahlen frowned at Kinkade's rejoinder.

"Well, no." he said. "Because that's stupid, and life isn't a movie. Johnson!"

One of the soldiers at the door snapped to attention.

"Take her to the mess and give her something to eat. And maybe a shock blanket. Have the doc check her out, anyway, make sure she's all right, but for God's sake keep her out of the classified areas."

With a nod, Cpt. Johnson gently took Caroline by the arm and led her out the door.

"So," said Kinkade with a sigh as Vahlen booted up the chrono-partical sensor, "I suppose with that doo-dad you'll look through time and space to find our valiant team and hope like hell that they haven't irrevocably ruined our past?"

She glared at him.

"Sometimes," she began icily, "I get rather tired of people with a massive empty space in their brains where temporal physics should be. The past cannot be changed. It is the past. The fourth dimension, unlike the others that we know of, is set and cannot be changed retroactively, due to our one dimensional travel on it in only one direction. Technically speaking, Black Squad has not gone back in time, they have simply crossed the universal barrier and are in a different timeline. Because in that universe, wherever they are – and it appears to be the early 1930's, by the by – has not reached our point in the fourth dimension yet, they are free to affect it in any way they choose."

"Put it simpler than that," growled Kinkade, "I'm a simple man."

"Fine," shrugged Vahlen, "Schrodinger's Cat."

"Ah! Well, then. Should've seen it all earlier."

…

…

…

…

…

One said to the other, _What will we do? Now that we do not clone, our race is dying at a worrisome pace. Surely within a mere few centuries we will be gone, a note in the history books of other dead races._

The answer came swiftly, _The masters were cruel, but their plan was good._

_No,_ the one shot back instantly, _that is impossible. Their plan backfired and destroyed nearly all of them._

_And freed us from their yoke!_ came the indignant telepathic reply. _There was nothing wrong with the end result of their plan, merely in the execution of the parts._

_Just as you say. How, then, shall we make ourselves known? We have learned much from the one who is now ours, and it would appear that the Chosen have grown – impossible as it sounds – even stronger. If we are to do this, we must show them their enemy. We must show them their fate if every race does not combine to stop this monstrosity. If we do not…_

_She will take us, _said the other with resignation.

_And we will be Hers,_ said the one.

...

...

...

...

...

_Dear fantasticks,_

_Thank you so much for all sticking with me! Hope you're enjoying the story, and are patient with me as I write more slowly than ever due to that greatest of evils to beset mankind since aliens who have the same weakness as the Wicked Witch of the West - WORK. If any of you figured out the great Enemy, don't tell the rest, kay? :P_

_Sincerely,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	17. XCOM: Truths Self-Evident

"Oh, that is IT!" yelled Leah Ellison as she slammed the door to the small flat. Walking as quickly as the knee-length spotted yellow dress would permit, she spun around the chair that Ben Angel had been relaxing in. "Would you like to know," she gritted out, "what travesty of social equality has been committed now? Of course you wouldn't. All you care about is sitting back here and keeping an eye on things while the rest of the team is out taking mercenary jobs!"

Heaving a sigh and throwing his head backwards, Ben answered wearily, "Look, Ellison, I understand it's hard for you to deal with this decade. It was a rough century for women in general, we get it. Still, doesn't it just make you grateful that you didn't have to go through it? If everything goes as planned, we'll be out of this time within another week or so, and back to where we belong."

"I'm going through it now!" she screamed. "I don't see why I have to constantly…" She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. It's been a rough three weeks."

Ben nodded seriously. "It's cool. I get it. I freaked out myself the first time I got separated from my squad for days at a time. I'm just lucky the squad leader was there to pull us through it."

"Your squad leader…" said Leah softly. "That'd be Colonel Coe, wouldn't it?"

She often thought to herself later that that was the first time she'd ever seen Colonel Angel look really human. Often, a joking exterior was what the XCOM soldiers used to deal with their trauma, but until then Ben's jokes had always seemed real. At the name, though, his eyes softened, and he whispered quietly, "I laughed out loud/ and grinned the rest of the day/ because I remember her, and I have touched her life/ I am happy now/ for the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."

"That sounded like a poem," said Leah. "I'm kind of curious as to where it's from."

Ben leaned back further into his chair and stayed silent for a moment before he began.

"After Anna – died – I had a tough time dealing with it. Don't get me wrong, I'd seen plenty of death before, and I've made a lot of hard choices. Real hard choices. I think what really got to me was how strong she was. That woman seemed like she had the best of nearly every human gift that could be given. She was strong, though I suppose that was more her training obsession than anything, and she was an ace shot. Kept asking the higher-ups for a sniper rifle, but she'd been assigned to be a support, so all she got was her plasma rifle. Every shot she made was a headshot, though. Every single one. Critical hits, every time. Then once Vahlen got her spooks inside our heads, she found out how strong her mind was. Out of everyone tested, she was strongest. Not one of those bug-headed freaks every got into her head – they just couldn't. She told me once that when they tried it felt like a tiny little dog trying to bite your ankles. Only thing she didn't have was looks – don't get me wrong, she wasn't awfully ugly or anything… Just a little bit ugly. Kind of a big nose, and a really skinny face to go with a short and skinny body. No matter how much she worked out, the woman stayed built like a tiny little rail."

Ben turned to look at Leah, and she realized that his eyes were starry – whether from tears or from looking into the past, she didn't know.

"You didn't notice after a while, though. She started looking beautiful after a while, better than any of the models or actresses back then. When you were pinned down under a hail of Ethereal guardsmen and your armor was already starting to melt from the fire you were taking, then you weren't thinking about looks. You'd just see blue fires from black armor, and she'd come down like a dark goddess from the sky. The Mutons shoot at her, but they'd always miss somehow. Then she'd start in on them, and they'd start dying. That was generally when they panicked and ran. She'd come down next to you, take off her helmet for a moment and grin at you through all the smoke and grime and grease of battle and tell you some stupid joke to get you going again. And you'd get going, because even dying would be worth it if it meant you wouldn't have to disappoint that grin. She was invincible."

Leah had sat down and started listening to the story with interest. It wasn't often that she'd heard such a personal story about the impersonal hero who saved the world from the histories. "But she wasn't," she said gently, "was she?"

Ben lowered his head. "No," he said. "It took a damn black hole to kill her, but she wasn't. Nobody is. It's not right that she's dead and we're alive, but that's war. Maybe someday we won't have to fight. All she wanted was for humans to be safe. I'll make sure that happens, someday. No matter what."

Colonel Ellen Reach looked at her squadmates and was glad that she was a ghost, glad that she wore a helmet. No one can see if you're crying, or remembering the dead, or anything at all when you're wearing your helmet. A tiny bit of sanity in the back of her head, the part that screamed at her that she wasn't really a ghost, she was a real human woman – told her to comfort them. Perhaps some small part of that message got through, as the voice of the woman who wasn't there sang softly in tones that never conveyed the damp on her cheeks,

_"Hello darkness, my old friend,  
I've come to talk with you again,  
Because a vision softly creeping,  
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,  
And the vision that was planted in my brain  
Still remains  
Within the sound of silence."_

…

…

…

…

…

"God, I hate this country," grumbled Colonel Peters, "it's all misery and grime and death. No one has any money, all the rich have cut and run, and a world war is merrily on its way."

"You might be judging the country rather harshly," commented McKay, "after all, maybe it's just the decade."

"Oh, it's partly the decade, I'll grant you that," retorted Adam, "but it's also the damn country. Look around you, Chris. Racial discrimination is as bad as it's ever been – slavery might as well still exist for all the equal treatment that's around. Sex discrimination is nearly as bad, as Demi here keeps reminding us. The Great Depression's just hit, and everyone's got no money. There's droughts and famines. Cancers and sickness, death and pain."

He stopped in the middle of the street, spreading his arms wide at the tall, grey buildings around him. It was the waning heat of twilight, when people are still desperate to get home. Those on the sidewalks gazed at the ground, walking as quickly as they could. "God bless America," Adam snarled, "if you're out there. I hope you're not, because you're as sick as most of these people if you let this happen to my planet. Better we pray to this neon god we've made than you."

"Watch it," hissed McKay, "you know I don't like talking beliefs on the squad, but there's such a thing as going too far. We got the parts we need, didn't we?"

"And what about the people who lived here?" asked Demi suddenly. "Agatha Christie, Amelia Earhart, Will Rogers. Some pretty all right people lived in this decade."

"It ended, too," added McKay, "all of it. The Great Depression happened, sure, but America's economy didn't stay in the toilet forever. They got out of it. Not just economically, either, but morale-wise. Heck, the war that started at the end of this decade is one of the most morally simple wars that's ever happened. It was no Vietnam, no Korea, not even a Civil War. Hitler commits genocide, let's go kill Hitler. It's that easy."

"Women – right to vote. Racial minorities – right to vote. They may have been broke, but it got fixed eventually." Colonel Firling looked Adam Peters in the eyes coolly. "Nothing's ever right from the start, Adam. It takes years, decades, centuries. Look at us. How long have we been fighting off aliens? Yet we're helping people."

"Don't pretend you care about Humanity, some nebulous concept like that," he growled. "we're both psi-positive, and I know your mind as well as you do."

Through half-closed eyes she looked at him. "I want you to think carefully about why you hate God so much, Adam. I don't believe in one personally – after all, nothing in the Bible my mother gave me mentioned aliens – but I don't hate something that doesn't exist. Seems a bit counter-intuitive."

He made a noise that could be favorably interpreted as a scoff. "Rather perfect that you're going to bring up that moth-ridden piece of fanfiction. Segues quite nicely into racism, sexism, and every other form of discrimination. If this country that you two are so intent on defending – which doesn't make much sense, if the world's supposed to be united under XCOM – was founded on it, 'Liberty and justice for all, all men are created equal' and all that, then explain all this!"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," said Christopher quietly, and the grey buildings seemed a little brighter. "That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers with the consent of the governed."

He looked up at Adam and Demi.

"In a very well-written book I once read, the distinction was made that all men are created equal. Not all men are created the same, but Equal. One man may be smarter than another, or better-looking, or even wiser. As they grow, perhaps they grow apart, and one becomes the slave of the other. The man may put his wife down with cruel words and actions, disrespect her and pretend that he is the master. He may, in his mind, rise above the world in his importance and scream into the stars, 'I am the single greatest being to ever arise in the universe! I am Manifest Destiny embodied! I am god made man!' But man is equal. We have those rights, those rights of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness – not the guarantee of happiness, Adam, merely the right to pursue it."

They walked up the stairs to the flat, a brief lull in the conversation, before Christopher continued.

"Maybe this country is screwed up. Even though in that document it says 'endowed by their Creator', maybe they forgot that. People will always use holy wars and their holy words to support whatever they want to, but I am reasonably secure in my belief, sir."

"And what belief is that, McKay?" Adam said coldly. "What kind of monstrous deity would make a world like this? A weak one, or a cruel one? It has to be one of the two. Why shouldn't he show himself, ensuring obedience?"

"I'm not a theologian, colonel, I'm a soldier." Chris smiled. "Though all this is how the squad gave me the nickname 'Preacher'. If you want answers to all that, I don't have them right now. You'll have to ask someone a lot smarter at books than me. Besides, the belief I have is a pretty simple one. I believe with all my heart that IF there is a God, everything after the words 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' made him smile from ear to ear. Sir."

There was a click as the lock gave under the key, and the flat's door opened.

…

…

…

…

…

The year is 2351.

The scene was one of darkness, cold metal and low lighting. In an abandoned room on an orbital station, a group gathered around a soft fire of debris.

"Please," begged one hooded figure quietly, "this is a mistake. They will kill us on sight – the entire race is as xenophobic as can be. We will all die for this foolishness. I plead with you, reconsider!"

"No," the other said, "we must. Someone must go to them and tell of our plight. They will sympathize, they must! If our intel is correct, then we have much in common!"

The tall, slender figure in uniform next to the second voice leaned to her ear and spoke softly.

"Of course I will go," she said in surprise, "I'm the only one who can."

There was silence from the rest of the circle, which continued until the female spoke again.

"It's decided, then."

"Nerys, please," begged the one next to her, "it's not safe."

"Within the year," she continued as if she had heard nothing, "Terok Nor will be ours, and Bajor will be free at last. Our days as slaves will be over."

…

…

…

…

…

There was a brilliant flash of light, and time split open as an instantaneous thing. Ben Angel started connecting his armor set to the XCOM net, and frowned under his helmet.

"We're off by a few years, ladies and gentlemen," he announced. "namely, about a generation. I'd rather not go back and try again if it's all the same to you."

Adam shrugged, still miffed by how long it had taken to get the machinery together. "I don't care," he grumbled, "or at least I wouldn't if we still had our ship. Where the hell did you tell that thing to put us, anyway?"

"Looks like the Cydonia shipyards to me," commented Leah, "though last I heard they were thinking of changing the name to something more gentle sounding. Utopia Planitia or something like that. Anyway, my brother's descendants lived around here, so it looked pretty familiar."

"That is SO weird to think of descendants like that," muttered Colonel Firling. "Time travel is real sodding trip."

Within hours, Black Squad was rebased to the shipyards, preparing for their meeting with the Commander and Dr. Vahlen.

"I knew those guys would still be alive," whispered Ben to Leah. "Seriously, I'm reasonably sure that they don't actually freeze themselves. They're just secretly vampires."

As the two leaders of XCOM entered the room, the squad straightened up and put their eyes forward.

"I'm not going to mince words," Kinkade said gruffly, "so I'll get right to it. Yesterday we received a transmission to one of our farthest satellites. It was short but sweet. We don't know what it means, so we're sending your brilliant arses out there to check it."

"What did it say, sir!" Colonel Peters barked.

Kinkade shrugged. "Just three words, son. Here, I even printed a copy of it for you."

Almost involuntarily, the entirety of the squad leaned in close, reading the stark letters on the slip of paper. It read simply:

**WE ARE BORG**

…

…

…

…

…

_Hello, loyal fantasticks!_

_I don't feel I actually have to say anything here. The final line should speak for itself. The enemy that the Ethereals ran from is coming, and it's coming pretty darn soon. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to it. I apologize for the increasing delay in chapters – I've decided that I don't want to focus on more than one fanfic at a time, even though I've been getting loads and loads of ideas. That, combined with my utter lack of editing, means that I'm a really slow writer until inspiration strikes. Thanks for sticking with me, and enjoy the show!_

_Sincererly,_

_The Once and Future Overlord_


	18. XCOM: Helm

A white ship flew through the ink of space.

The twin nacelles were curved out from its body, reflecting the aesthetics of the Ethereals, present even now. The teardrop-shaped head speared out from the body, piercing the void ahead at multiples of the speed of light.

From a distance, it could almost be just another white star, gleaming in the black.

On its side, as bold as if the laws of causality had determined that it be there, the letters forming _XSS Enterprise-II_ stood strong.

The starship dropped out of warp, reality bending and stretching around it, near a satellite platform that was pocked and scarred, wisps of vaporized metal still drifting around the localized gravitation.

Space was quiet.

It always was.

If space had sound effects, though, there would have been a massive _THWOOM_ sound as a ship dropped out of warp, looking like an anarchist's nightmare as it appeared, geometry filling the emptiness.

A single, massive cube. Covered in technological detritus, black and grey with emerald tinges here and there. Terror can be found in simplicity at times – people are afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone. The cube was simple, yes, but size carries its own terror.

On the _Enterprise-II_'s bridge, activity reigned supreme.

"Red alert!" shouted Firling. As Peters had taken command, she'd taken over as First Officer, whose responsibility (so the manual claimed) included shouting "Red Alert" when required. "All hands to battle stations, prepare to engage the enemy!"

"Sir," asked Ellison, "are we sure this is the … sorry, sir. Stupid question."

"Ellison," said Peters sternly, "later I will expect a full apology from you for trying to be the token non-aggression voice that doesn't want to shoot aliens. For now, though, it's time for us to be badass and shoot aliens. Maybe not in that particular order. Commander Firling, lock plasma banks on that vessel and hail it."

"Getting a response from the comm, sir," called McKay, "coming in now."

A figure appeared on the viewscreen. Mechanical bits and pieces seemed to be sewed into its skin in places, fused with the body. One red beam moved in a search pattern from the thing's left eye, and its right arm appeared to have steel talons that clacked together in place of a hand. Worst of all, if you looked through the steam behind it, you realized that there were a thousand other small red dots, just in the background…

The voice, when it came, sounded like the dead had come to life and raised their voices in one.

**_We are Borg._**

**_You will be assimilated._**

**_Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own._**

**_Resistance is futile._**

The bridge crew of the _Enterprise-II_ sat in silence for a moment before Peters finally spoke.

"Piss on that," he said with disgust, "Firling, open fire."

From the white ship, a hundred bolts of green fire shot forth, tearing through space until they collided with the Borg vessel. Where they connected, parts of the ship melted away into red-hot slag, eliciting a smug grin from the captain.

"Continue firing until that thing is gone. Whoever these Borg are, they need to learn the lesson the rest of the sector got – you don't touch human things, or we'll blow you to hell. And not in the fun way."

Another hundred bolts came, searing from the launchers of the starship towards the massive object. To the horror of the crew, though, they merely splattered against some kind of energy shield, as did all weapons fire that followed.

"McKay!" barked Peters. "How long until that shield goes down!"

McKay frowned at the control panel, trying to think of some way to say this that didn't sound like such terrible news.

"Captain," he said reluctantly, "I don't think that's a conventional shield. It appears as if these 'Borg' have somehow modified their shielding so that it filters the exact energy signature of our plasma cannons, rendering them as useless as if we were pointing flashlights at them."

"Damn," Peters hissed, "that's not good. Actually, that's impossible! It'd take a ridiculous amount of computing power to work out that filter between our first volley and our second! And cease fire, by the way, we look like idiots!"

"Sir, should we…" Ben started to say, before he was interrupted by a shudder that ran through the entire ship. Green light filled the viewscreen, and a quick scan showed that the cube had them in some kind of holding beam.

The telltale shimmer of a transporter sparkled through the bridge, and three figures appeared there, all of them mechanical monstrosities. The Borg had arrived.

"Armor!" yelled Peters as he rolled out of the chair to cover, pulling his plasma pistol as he did so. The other members of Black Squad ducked under the consoles as well, drawing their weapons and summoning their sets of Olympian Armor.

Green fire slammed into the body of the first Borg, and it stumbled backwards and fell to the ground, gaping holes throughout. The next fell as well, even as the transporter hummed again.

A rectangular force field appeared on the last Borg when the plasma shots hit, and the heart of the bridge collectively dropped. Screams began coming through the shipboard comm unit, and the Borg stepped forward, slowly, almost jerkily. It would have been funny to see, thought Leah absently, almost like an actor in a constricting rubber suit from one of those old monster movies she used to watch. It would have been quite funny, except that it kept coming.

It wasn't stopping. It was smashing through the captain's chair with its mechanical arm, it had smashed through it like it was made of paper. Oh, God, it had Adam by the throat, it was bringing its arm up now…

"AAAHHHHHHH!" roared McKay as he charged into the thing, knocking it onto its side, away from Adam, away from the captain. He wasn't even firing his gun anymore, probably figuring that the thing was less than useless if he'd tried. He just kept bashing the creature about the head with it like some kind of madman, and Leah was nearly certain that she'd heard a crunch. She dared to take a breath.

The Borg stood. Its face was shattered. Grey, slimy goo dripped from the cracks in its skull, and McKay made a choking noise as it lifted his entire body with one hand. From the other hand, thin wires shot, stabbing into his neck. He stiffened, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Opening its hand, the Borg let him fall to the ground, and began walking slowly towards Peters again.

As if it had bumped into something, it stopped, looking as confused as a being with a smashed in face can look. There was an abrupt _CRACK_ which sounded like heaven to the bridge crew's ears, and the Borg's chest exploded as it flew backwards and thumped into the viewscreen with a thump that tolled finality.

"Their shields project a distance of around eleven inches from their bodies," snapped Firling, "so get close in and finish those two off!"

"Angel, seal the ship!" ordered Peters a second later.

Within moments, the other two Borg were destroyed, and the ship was sealed from further intruders. As Ben Angel studied his console, though, his frown grew. "Sir, the lower decks aren't responding. I think we've lost them."

"Well, what's happened to them?" asked Leah frantically. "There's got to be…"

"Please…" rattled a voice from the floor, causing the squad to twitch and aim their weapons hastily.

McKay had struggled to get to his hands and knees. A sickly gray color had spread over most of his neck and body, and his eyes remained rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. Odd green lines had etched themselves over his face, drawn out in strange, straight-edged patterns.

"You have to evacuate the ship, now… They already have the crew below, I can feel them. If they live, everything we know, they will know as well… You have to get away, now. Fight them. I wish I could help, help some way but this…"

"Christopher, no!" screamed Demi Firling, and she leaped towards him as he brought his plasma pistol to his chin and fired upwards once.

As she cradled the body, Peters turned to Angel's console and began typing commands.

"What are you doing?" asked Leah tearfully.

"They're inside the ship's systems," he answered grimly, "we've got to find some way to get them out and get away, fast."

"We could try flooding the ship with knockout gas," suggested Ben, "that might work."

"No," said Peters, shaking his head, "they've got the environmental controls. Don't worry, though. I've taken care of it."

"How?" screamed Firling at him. "How have you possibly taken care of this?"

Peters gave her a cool look. "We should go," he said simply, "now. Colonel Reach, if you would?"

Invisible fingers tapped at the controls of the ship, inputting the final orders. With a lurch, the engines of the _XSS Enterprise-II _roared to life, and it began moving towards the cube at an increasingly rapid pace.

"Are you insane?" yelled Ben. "I mean, I always knew you were, but I didn't think it was this bad!"

"Do you trust me?" Peters asked him calmly.

There was silence on the bridge as the crew looked around, occasionally glancing at the viewscreen to see the cube getting closer, ever closer.

"… Yes." Firling finally said quietly.

"Good! Colonel Reach, please hold. Hold… Now, if you please!"

There was a massive blast, and the bridge of the _Enterprise-II_ separated from the main body, a teardrop in the sky, swerving from the hulk of metal that lay before it.

Black Squad watched what was left of their ship slam into the Borg, flaming plasma blossoming out as the warp core ignited, consuming both vessels.

"We need to get back to XCOM Command," Leah said grimly, "they're going to want to hear about this. Looks like we've finally met some X-Rays who can match us."

"Not for long!" retorted Angel. "After all, isn't that how we used to do it? We got our asses handed to us by some species with better tech than us, then we stole it and adapted and kicked THEIR asses back at them."

"Idiot," spat Firling, "these things adapt as a way of life. Just accept it – we're outmatched here. Outgunned. Our metaphorical pooch is getting metaphorically screwed."

"No," Adam Peters said through a clenched jaw, "no, we're going to win this. We're going to suffer losses, yes, but someday we'll run those bastards into the ground and nail them to the wall. We're humans, after all. It's what we do."

…

…

…

…

…

Smoke blew through the corridors of Terok Nor, and cries of pain filled the air. Ignoring the battles going on around her, a lone soldier walked towards the command center, determination in her eyes. A Cardassian officer made a token movement towards her that was rewarded with a phaser shot between the eyes.

"Attention," she said into the station-wide public address, her voice cracking slightly from the grey that filled the air. "This is Commander Kira Nerys of…" She stopped as she realized that she no longer knew exactly what the united Bajoran army was called.

She remembered how the Kai had screamed at the hands of their slavers. How Ro Laren had stayed undercover as a double agent for years, selling her body to the Cardassians to gain vital information for the liberation. Her voice grew stronger.

"This is Commander Kira Nerys, of Bajor. Terok Nor is no longer. From now until the station's destruction, we are the Helm of the Prophets. We will no longer surrender. We will no longer compromise. We will no longer be slaves. Every Bajoran fights to the death."

The battles in the background were nearly done with. Bodies lay splayed across the floor, and the floors of the former Cardassian base were painted red with Bajoran blood. But Cardassians lay there as well, and to the mind of Kira Nerys, it was a price well paid. For the first time in many decades, Bajor was a free world again.

"If you are outnumbered by Cardassian forces, and death is inevitable, then do not give up your life in vain. Take them down, take down as many as you can. Blow them up, gun them to the floor, tear them apart with your bare hands and make them pay in gallons for every drop of Bajor's blood they spill!"

Rebellions, Kira knew, rarely worked out. In the case of Bajor, they had never worked out. Certainly, there had been many times before when the peasantry of Bajor had decided they wanted to stop being peasants, and had taken up farming implements in the thousands. Taken up those implements against the well-armed, well-trained ruling class slavers. Whereupon they stopped being peasants _really fast_.

"Their numbers are greater. They will always be greater. But we have a cause, and we will be fiercer than any of those lizards! Even as we die, losing the day, we _WILL_ win the war so long as we show the galaxy that Bajor will be a force to be reckoned with. The humans will notice, and they…"

Here she died off again. Was she so sure that the humans would join their cause? Surely the stories of their xenophobic tendencies could not be true of them all. Surely they would become allies.

"They will help," she finished determinedly. "They will help, for it is the will of the Prophets that our race does not die. The Word of the Prophets will save us, and the humans will be proud of the ferocity we show them."

She moved away and sat heavily into the chair of command, where Gul Dukat had sat not so long ago. Until, of course, she had him dragged before the former workers and split his skull in twain with the bladed chain he had fitted to his personal slaves. She was in charge now, even though she didn't want to be. Odo had pulled her aside gently during the close of the battle and told her quietly that her people needed someone in command, and she was the one with the most recognized face. They would follow her to the home of the Pah-Wraiths and back. She had looked at him with confused written on her grime-covered face and then nodded without really meaning it.

Kira Nerys, Commander of the Helm of the Prophets, gazed out into space and mumbled to herself.

"Sweet Prophets. Save your people, and let the humans come. We will fight if they come and fight if they do not, but if they do not… Your people will surely die."

…

…

…

…

…

_Hello, loyal fantasticks!_

_Sorry that it's been a while, but summer's coming to a close, and classes loom on the horizon like a mighty Borg cube. _

_Freedom looms on the horizon as well – freedom through a proper schedule, with properly scheduled free time for writing. In the meantime, hope you enjoy everything now that we're officially in the TNG/DS9 era! Leave a review on your thoughts, and thanks so much for all your support!_

_~The Once and Future Overlord_


	19. XCOM: Determination

"No," Colonel Peters said firmly, "not in a million years. We're not going to waste resources on X-Rays, not when a new species is getting ready to tear us a new one."

Commander Kinkade sighed, and gestured at Doctor Vahlen in an attempt to get her to explain the situation for him.

She cleared her throat, hoping to keep down her accent – it always seemed to come through stronger when she was nervous.

"Colonel," she began, "these… Bajorans, as the message said… Well. I suppose I must let you see their message for yourself. It was quite moving."

All eyes in the roomed turned to the viewscreen as it crackled to life.

Static.

Then, through the wavy lines, a face. It grew clearer every second, and Adam's first thought was that these new aliens must have red skin… He realized soon that it was blood. Their blood was red, just like a real person's.

"My name is Ro Laren."

He realized that it was female, and quite pretty underneath the blood. The cheekbones were a bit sharp, but she had wide hazel eyes that were really…

Adam shook his head. It was an X-Ray, next thing he knew he'd be lusting after a Klingon.

"I'm currently on the planet Bajor, in the sector near what you would know as the Beta Ursae Sector Block. We're the eleventh planet in our system."

The camera drew back, to reveal fire as far as the eye could see.

"We're at war."

Long, fierce eyebrows drew together on the woman's face, and the movement seemed to open some cuts, squeezing out more drops of blood.

"We're at war with a race called Cardassians. I'm sure you've heard of them – they're one of the signatories of the Federation. Their Union is the main producer of the Federation's weapons and starships. Weapons and starships need materials, though, and for that… For that you need mining."

The camera swept around, revealing that the fire-drenched terrain had once been something that resembled a factory. Ro Laren's voice grew stronger as the view focused on the remains.

"But the Cardassians weren't about to mine what they needed themselves, oh no! Why should they? They already had the best damn workforce in the galaxy! A workforce that would never have to be paid or taken care of or worried about. Only fed. So long as they were fed, they'd work."

Adam realized that what he'd thought were piles of disused burning equipment seemed instead to be bodies. Upon closer inspection, Cardassian bodies.

The camera turned back around, and he thought he could hear Ellison murmuring something.

"For fifty years," Ro continued, "Cardassians occupied my world. They invaded without a word of warning, because we were inferior. They moved through my planet in a coordinated scheme of strip-mining, slave labor, and genocide!"

She was shouting into the camera now, wiping her face with her sleeve, and though it was hard to tell – the amount of blood on her face still made her look like someone had thrown a bucket of red paint on her – Adam thought she might be weeping. Her face contorted further, into an angry grimace.

"So we kicked them out," she growled, "we kicked them off our planet and off that slave collar they called a space station, we kicked them out of our system! Twenty million Bajorans died, but we didn't die for nothing. We're a free world again."

Her voice died down, and her eyes drifted to something off screen. Adam thought that if he listened closely, he could almost hear screaming and crying in the background. Very faint, so faint you could hardly hear it if you weren't listening for it.

"A free world…" she whispered.

Her eyes came back up to the camera, and she swallowed.

"The Federation is coming," she said softly, "and we're all going to die. I know we have no right to ask anything of you, but they're coming, and unless you help us it will all have been for nothing. So please, help us. However you can, no matter how small the help might be, we don't care. In the name of the Prophets, by our shared straits in this time, we beg of you."

Ro Laren straightened and saluted.

"In the name of Bajor and her fallen. Ro Laren out."

There was a moment of silence in the room before Demi Firling slammed her fist against the wall and growled, "Damn it."

Ben Angel heaved a sigh. "Yeah," he agreed, "we pretty much have to help them. I mean, they're basically us against the Ethereals, except the Ethereals are super-powerful and going to destroy us unless someone gives us some help."

Leah nodded slowly. "We've got to help them, then."

Adam looked around the room in disbelief.

"They're X-Rays!" he shouted. "Aliens! They're not human! Are we seriously considering wasting resources, wasting _lives_, that could end up helping actual people back on Earth?"

"No," Vahlen said coolly, "we are most certainly not."

All eyes in the room went to her in confusion.

"What do you mean, doctor?" asked Leah at last.

"She means we're sending you lot," Kinkade said gruffly, "so with all due respect to the late Colonel McKay, you'd best hope you're ready to move to Bajor. We've already prepared a new ship for you, although it's not quite as advanced tech as we'd like. We're sending the schematics we got from our scans of the Borg vessel, though, so if you come up with anything while you're there feel free to add it on."

The sensation of disbelief that was previously limited to Colonel Peters seemed to have spread slightly.

"Are you insane?" asked Demi finally. "There's only five of us. Yes, we have some pretty advanced tech, but there's no way we can hold an entire system against the Cardassians, much less the entire Federation."

Kinkade laughed. A short, sharp laugh that sounded more like a bark than anything else.

"Girl," he finally said, "you're not going to just hold it. With the help of these Bajorans, you're going to wipe out the Federation for us."

Stunned silence fell through the room, with only the sound of Dr. Vahlen's fingers on her pad remaining. Dr. Vahlen was rarely surprised by anything, and couldn't let small things like the impossible distract her from the Borg research that was pouring in these days.

"… Well, then." Colonel Angel stepped forward and saluted smartly. "Colonel Benjamin Angel reporting for duty, sir. We'll drive out the alien bastards with a sharp stick in their figgin, no doubt about it."

A grim smile fleeting passed across the Commander's face. "Dismissed."

As Black Squad moved back to the station's quarters, Leah hissed at Ben.

"Are you insane? We're all doomed! The five of us are supposed to take out an interstellar empire? In case you forgot, we're not the heroes of some stupid story! We can die! Chris found that out for himself!"

Ben gave her a grin that would've been a case for sexual harassment in at least five star systems.

"Miss Ellison, we can do it."

"And why's that?" she responded sharply.

Popping a piece of gum into his mouth, he shrugged. "We're humans. We're badass as hell."

…

…

…

…

…

"Commander Kira!"

Odo's gruff voice rang out across the command deck of the Helm of the Prophets, and she snapped her head around towards him.

"What is it, Odo?"

His tone was crisp, professional, and business-like. Just as a second-in-command should be. There had been some discussion among the Bajorans about what type of government they should have, now that they were free for the first time ever, but the majority had agreed that now that they'd declared war on a sizeable portion of the quadrant perhaps it'd be best if Commander Kira stayed in charge for now.

"There's a ship inbound. It's not a Cardassian."

She frowned. A Federation scout, maybe? The Cardassian attack yesterday had severely damaged the newly-christened _Helm_, but they'd underestimated Bajoran tenacity yet again, and sent a token force of ten cruisers to deal with one of their own space stations. If the Federation was sending scouts, though, then there would be a larger force inbound soon. One that even they couldn't deal with.

"What's the signature?" she asked, already knowing the answer in her mind.

"… Human." His voice carried with it a surprising amount of emotion. Kira hadn't thought that he could have that much emotion, he was always nothing but gruff before.

"Scans?"

"Minimal. The ship appears to have only a skeleton crew, with very few weapons. I've never seen this kind of engine before, though. This thing's sublight must be a sight to see."

Kira suppressed the tremor in her voice as she said slowly, "Hail them."

A beep or two later, Odo said quickly, "They're responding. On-screen now."

A face appeared on the _Helm's_ massive viewscreen. A handsome face, Kira supposed, surprisingly handsome. He almost looked like the star of one of the old holo-reels that her grandmother used to show her from before the invasion. The nose was all wrong, of course, but that couldn't be helped. At least he looked properly Bajoran.

"My name," he began, "is Captain Adam Peters of the _XSS Voyager_. We're here to provide military assistance to the home species of the planet Bajor, eleventh planet of the Bajor system. Are you in command here? In the video there was another – Ro Laren, I believe was the name."

She swallowed before responding.

"Yes, Captain. My name is Commander Kira Nerys. I'm in command of the Bajoran fleet and this starbase, the _Helm of the Prophets_. General Ro Laren is in command of the Bajor ground forces, and general peacekeeping there. The Cardassians were in control for fifty years. There've been a lot of changes around here."

He raised an eyebrow. "So I can imagine. Well, Commander, we're here to provide military assistance, as I said. First thing to do is locking down our ship, so if one of your officers could direct my helmsman to the docking bay, that'd be helpful."

"Certainly." She gestured behind her, and an officer began transmitting the appropriate data.

He inclined his head slightly. "We'll begin the military part as soon as we've docked. In the meantime, prepare your best engineers. This station is going to start getting several rather important upgrades in the near future."

Kira fought the urge to salute, and satisfied herself with yet another nod.

The strong-jawed human turned towards someone off-screen and tersely said, "Cease transmission."

…

…

…

…

…

On a rather different planet, where a rather different species was monitoring the conversation, one turned to another and thought,

_They have accepted another. Perhaps there is hope yet._

_No,_ thought the other, _they accepted those out of necessity, and those on their homeworld will not be told until the idea becomes palatable. We must wait until the idea takes root, gets a hold on their brain. Only then can we proceed._

_We must not rush, _the first said. _If we do…_

The second finished. _They will kill us all._

…

…

…

…

…

_Hello, loyal fantasticks! Sorry for the rather delayed update – what with school starting and all these other fanfiction ideas buzzing around in my brain (I'll blame the "Buzz, buzz" on Shakespeare) I'm just swamped! Please don't hate my other fanfics for delaying this one just because they're not as good… Just think of them like you think of, I don't know… Insert clever pop culture reference here. Anyways, major thanks to my new (and first ever!) beta, karatemaster101. You should definitely all check out his crossovers of Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl, because they're awesome. Be warned, though, that binge reading them all in one day is a distinct possibility._

_Finally, I have a surprise for you all. I've begun preliminary work on beginning a prequel to this fanfic. I will be playing through XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and naming the characters, and chronicling their adventures. Everyone on Black Squad – and the squads you never met – will get more fleshed-out backstories and characterization. Plus, loads and loads of killing aliens, as opposed to discussing morality and ethics. Anyway, here's to you all, and may you all survive school!_

_~The Once and Future Overlord_


	20. XCOM: Interlude

_AN: Here's a tiny one shot to tide you over until the next time the mood strikes. Muses are fickle things, and I have a suspicious feeling that mine gets her cues from my exes. In the meantime, enjoy all this ridiculously fluffy nonsense. For informational purposes: this takes place during the voyage to the _Helm of the Prophets_, on the _XSS Voyager_. _

…

…

…

…

…

Leah Ellison stood in the sonic showers of the _Voyager_, wondering why they'd given such a non-violent name to a starship for once. XCOM's division tended to be a bit aggressive, and naming it something like _Voyager_ showed a bit of a shift in mood.

Perhaps, she thought, it was his daughter's birthday, and she wanted a present.

Turning to grab her towel, she imitated the daughter's voice.

"Oh, daddy, daddy! Please, daddy, may we name a ship after something that doesn't evoke thoughts of mass murder? May we, daddy dearest?"

She walked down the empty hallways to her assigned room, which she shared with Colonel Firling. Leah wasn't quite sure why they were making them share rooms when the entire thing was under skeleton crew, but she wasn't about to complain. XCOM soldiers tended to not want to sleep alone after a while.

Grumbling and muttering under her breath when she realized that the door was locked, she slammed her palm on the door's padd in an attempt to get her roommate to wake up. On the third strike of her hand against the innocent technology, the door slid open a fraction and Demi's head peeked out.

"What do you want?" she growled.

XCOM soldiers were expected to rise and shine at any hour so that they could be instantly ready to kill any aliens that were needing it. Having that drilled into you year after year made mornings less of something you dealt with via coffee and more something you dealt with by killing a few dozen things that were trying aggravatingly hard to kill you back.

Leah looked at her oddly.

"I'd quite like my room, please," she said slowly, in case Demi was feeling sick in the ears this morning, "I live there, after all."

She looked at what she could see of Demi. It was rather apparent that she wore only the sheet that had been grabbed from the bed.

"Were you going to take a shower too?" she asked carefully.

Demi gave her a long, careful look. Finally, after a period of time in which Leah felt like an ant under a magnifying glass, she nodded.

"Yes," she said, and dropped the sheet, walking down the hall towards the showers.

"Yes," said Adam, and came out of the room behind her.

Leah watched them go, thinking of the many times that she'd wished for some relaxation during the war, and thought – not for the first time – that perhaps she wasn't stupid so much as she didn't have the interesting way of approaching problems that the rest of Black Squad did.

After a brief moment during which she contemplated exorcising the images of Adam and Demi together from her mind using her strongest plasma pistol, she threw on her uniform and reported for duty. If you let things like the thought of your best looking co-worker making sweet love to your rather bony and unattractive other co-worker, you'd never get anything done.

It wasn't until after the _Voyager_ docked with the _Helm_ that Leah realized that she had not actually gotten anything done – something which was possibly due to the fact that she had _only _put on her uniform this morning.

Sighing, she shuffled the stack of electronic files that awaited her as official Liason of Bajor and XCOM. What was life, if not providing a little entertainment now and then?

…

…

…

…

…

_Hello, loyal fantasticks!_

_Hope you're all having a wonderful school year! I apologize deeply for this – please, don't consider it a chapter if you like. Really, the only reason I had for writing this is to provide a bit of entertainment, as Leah said, and to show that the members of Black Squad aren't actually inhuman Terminators without all the weaknesses. They do have human feelings, human thoughts, and human desires. They are HUMAN, after all, and humans occasionally bone. So yes, the members of Black Squad bone. No, it isn't just Adam and Demi. No, I'm not telling you who else has or hasn't in the past. Now go have a laugh with some friends. Sometimes that's all we really need. _

_Sincerely and Lovingly,_

_~The Once and Future Overlord_


End file.
